During the Long Night of the Museums on Saturday, August 25th, 2018, the Gemäldegalerie, the Kunstgewerbemuseum and the Kupferstichkabinett will be represented in the Kulturforum, as will the Alte Museum, the Bode-Museum and the Neues Museum on the Museum Island Berlin with a diverse programme of exhibitions and events. These six buildings of the National Museums in Berlin open their doors in addition to the regular opening hours from 6 pm to 2 am.
Image above: Lustgarten und Altes Museum, Photo: Stephanie Schneider
On the occasion of the special exhibition “Food Revolution 5.0. Design for Tomorrow’s Society” in the Museum of Decorative Arts, the Kulturforum is dedicated to the theme of “Food” during Long Night: A large summer food market on the Piazzetta of the Kulturforum offers a wide range of pop-up snacks, market stalls, workshops and discussion rounds.
In keeping with this year’s Long Night focus on “museum staircases”, the Old Museum, the Bode Museum and the New Museum offer dance and music in their stairwells and take a closer look at their architecture as part of guided tours. Another focal point is the educational format “Keep an eye out” with individual museum tours, while children and families can expect a wide range of activities in the Bode-Museum. For the first time, the National Museums are also offering guided tours in Russian this year.
Food at the Kulturforum
On the occasion of the exhibition “Food Revolution 5.0. Designing for Tomorrow’s Society” at the Museum of Decorative Arts, a summer food market will take place in the Piazzetta of the Cultural Forum from August 23rd to 25th, 2018 – with pop-up snacks, market stalls, tastings, workshops and roundtable discussions by agricultural producers, manufacturers, street food caterers and initiatives dealing with nutrition issues. The Summer Food Market is open from 12 pm to 12 am during the Long Night. In the evening, the Arte Summer Cinema also shows short films on the Street Food Revolution, while an urban orchard meadow invites you to harvest your harvest. The permanent collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts focuses on historical eating culture, and events present visions for the future of eating. This offer is extended in the Gemäldegalerie, where the representation of food in the painting of past centuries is illuminated. The special exhibition “Fleisch” in the Altes Museum also takes up aspects of the theme.
Focus on Museum Staircases
One of the highlights of the Long Night of Museums 2018, which this year focuses on museum staircases, will be the performance by four-time Berlin breakdance world champion Flying Steps, who will transform the Neues Museum’s large stairwell into a stage for urban dance. The Landesjugendballett of the Staatliche Ballettschule Berlin under the direction of Jean Hugo Assohoto dances through the “golden axis” of the Bode-Museum. The violinist Barennie Moon, concert master of the WDR Symphony Orchestra, plays in the Great Dome Hall of the Bode Museum. Hourly discovery tours and two children’s tours are dedicated to the stairwells of the Hohenzollern. Contemporary music will be presented in the stairwell of the Altes Museum, where the Ensemble KNM Berlin, together with maulwerker, will present a selection of Dieter Schnebel’s “MOMA – Museum Pieces II” for moving voices and instruments.
Keep an eye out!
After the success of recent years, the educational format “Keep an eye out” will be continued in this Long Night of Museums: In all participating museums, art and cultural mediators invite different types of visitors to explore the collections in a communicative way. The offers are aimed, for example, at explorers who are curious about unexpected encounters, those in a hurry who want to visit as many places as possible during the Long Night, or those curious about the stories behind the exhibits. Those who yearn, romantics and practitioners are also very welcome.
Guided tours in Russian
This year, the National Museums in Berlin are pleased to offer Russian visitors to the Long Night of the Museums guided tours in Russian for the first time – with a total of six consecutive tours of the Gemäldegalerie, the Kupferstichkabinett, the Kunstgewerbemuseum and the Bode-Museum.
Offers for children and families
With four guided tours for children on selected themes, a drawing workshop every hour from 6 pm to 9 pm and performances by the Landesjugendballetts, the Bode Museum in particular is a worthwhile address for families during Long Night.
Special Exhibitions
Museum Island Berlin, Bode-Museum
Incomparable: Art from Africa in the Bode Museum
For the first time, the sculptural traditions of Africa and Europe will enter into a direct dialogue on the Museum Island Berlin. Over 70 major works of African sculpture from the Ethnological Museum will be on show at the Bode Museum from October 2017. Art from West and Central Africa meets masterpieces from Byzantium, Italy and Central Europe – the sculpture traditions of the two continents have never been compared so extensively.
Museum Island Berlin, Neues Museum
Margiana. A Kingdom of the Bronze Age in Turkmenistan – with photographs by Herlinde Koelbl
Margiana – this historic landscape in eastern Turkmenistan was the cradle of a fascinating high culture of the Bronze Age some 4,000 years ago. At the same time as the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, however, it remained largely unknown in the western world. For the first time outside Turkmenistan, the archaeological evidence of this mysterious culture will be made accessible to a broad public in a large-scale special exhibition. The photographer Herlinde Koelbl was won over for the photographs of the archaeological sites, landscapes, people and exhibits. The result is a fascinating symbiosis of unknown archaeological relics and photographic art from a largely unknown country.
Museum Island Berlin, Altes Museum
Meat
When we think of meat, we often first think of food. But also our body itself is meat. In cultural and cultic contexts, meat has been a central component for thousands of years. In short: meat is food, body and cult. It reveals the transition from the living to the dead. The exhibition presents the relationship of man to flesh and the complexity of flesh in the field of tension between its emergence and decay in an interdisciplinary manner, across the collections of the National Museums in Berlin with archaeological, ethnological and art historical objects from 5,000 years of human history – from a clay tablet with 58 different pig names from the late Uruk period to works by contemporary artists such as Vanessa Beecroft, Christian Jankowski and Bruce Nauman.
Kulturforum, Museum of Decorative Arts
Food Revolution 5.0. Designing for tomorrow’s society
How will we eat in the future, what will we feed on in our growth society, which is characterized by dwindling resources? Each of us shapes the globe with our eating habits. Food is no longer a private matter, but a highly political act. The Museum of Decorative Arts is transforming itself into an artistic-scientific speculative laboratory for new models of thought and practice on the future of eating and living. For the exhibition, 30 international designers – including Werner Aisslinger, Hanan Alkouh, Martí Guixe, Jinhyun Jeon, Ton Matton, Maurizio Montalti, Chloé Rutzerveld, Andrea Staudacher, Johanna Schmeer, Carolin Schulze, Austin Stewart and Marije Vogelzang – present their designs, ideas and visions for the transformation of our nutrition system.
Kulturforum, Museum of Prints and Drawings
Rembrandt’s workshop. Drawings of the Rembrandt School
Rembrandt or not Rembrandt? From the very beginning, drawings by the Dutch master were confused with drawings by his students and collaborators who worked in the same style. Current research in recent years has led to the revolutionary revaluation of Rembrandt’s graphic work, which also affects the great collection of the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett. The exhibition in the summer of 2018 presents around 100 of Rembrandt’s best drawings as well as some originals from his own collection and other museums.
Kulturforum, Gemäldegalerie
In a new light. Works in the Wandelhalle
For the first time in the history of the Gemäldegalerie, the entire spectrum of the collection can be experienced in a single exhibition space: the approximately 70-meter-long and 18-meter-wide Wandelhalle, with masterpieces by and to Hieronymus Bosch, Lucas Cranach, Diego Velázquez, Giovanni Paolo Panini, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, becomes the central entrance portal to the collection of European painting, which spans almost five centuries. Ten important works of 17th-century Dutch painting are integrated into the presentation – including important works from the Rembrandt workshop, by Jan Steen and Adriaen van Ostade, which the Gemäldegalerie has received on permanent loan from the Heinz Kuckei Collections Foundation.
The entire program of the National Museums in Berlin for the Long Night of the Museums 2018 as well as tickets can be found online at: www.smb.museum.
The entire programme of the Long Night of the Museums 2018 as well as tickets can be found online at: www.lange-nacht-der-museen.de.
