2025 marks the 75th anniversary of the Georg Kolbe Museum. The exhibition on this occasion is based on the founding moment of the institution, which opened its doors in 1950 as the first new museum in post-war West Berlin.
Image gallery
Museumseröffnung 1950, Foto: Georg Kolbe Museum
At that time, the museum was a memorial site for the sculptor Georg Kolbe, who died in 1947 and lived and worked in Sensburger Allee from the time the extraordinary ensemble was built in 1928. The studio rooms, which were opened to the public in 1950, had apparently remained untouched since Kolbe's death.
Numerous sculptures on display provided an insight into the artist's entire work. Kolbe's personal objects stylized the work and living space into an elevated place of veneration, where visitors entered a supposedly intact German history.
The exhibition focuses on the staging of memory and examines remembering in its various - private as well as public - forms.
Contemporary artists open up diverse perspectives on the past and present through their own reflections on the topic. What was remembered in 1950? How and what do people remember today and what forms does this memory take?
On the one hand, the exhibition is about the critical examination of one's own institutional history, with imagined, felt and lived (family) ties that have had a lasting impact on the museum. On the other hand, the exhibition takes a self-reflective look at the topic of musealization and the control, idealization and narration of history and memory.
The group exhibition is part of a diverse program in the anniversary year 2025, which celebrates the Georg Kolbe Museum as a lively place of art.
Additional information
Price: €8.00
Reduced price: €5.00
Reduced price info: Children and young people up to 18 years and members of the Circle of Friends have free admission.
