New space for education: Museum Barberini expands educational programme and opens the Barberini Studio

Guided tours, lectures and workshops, formats for school classes and kindergartens, concerts, readings, birthday and company parties: the Museum Barberini offers a wide range of opportunities for all age groups, different interests and in different languages to come into contact with the museum’s art.

Image above: courtesy of Museum Barberini, © David von Becker.

In the eight years since it opened, the Barberini has developed into one of the museums in Germany with the most educational programmes. Around 50,000 visitors took advantage of the educational programme last year alone, ten percent more than in the previous year.

The Barberini offered 2,800 guided tours and workshops in 2024 alone – twice as many as in 2022. In response to the high demand, the Museum Barberini is now expanding its educational programme even further: With the opening of the new space for education and inspiration, the Barberini Studio, right next to the museum, workshop and discussion formats will be given even more space in the Barberini’s programme from mid-February.

On the opening weekend of the Kosmos Kandinsky exhibition, the studio is offering an “Open Studio” for the first time on 16 February 2025 from 12 noon to 4 pm, where visitors can get a first impression without prior registration and take part in a tape art workshop, among other things.

With the Barberini Studio, the museum is not only expanding its spatial capacities. The Barberini Studio is also breaking new ground in terms of content: collaborations with partners such as the HPI-D-School, Potsdam, the Bauhaus Archive, Berlin, and the non-profit initiative KI macht Schule are the first step. Further educational partnerships are being planned. Workshops on digital drawing, creative coding and sound collages are just some of the new formats on offer.

Holiday workshops and project days for school classes, English-language programmes and the new Art and Knowledge discussion series ensure a varied programme. The Barberini Art Club, which has existed since 2024 and is an association of committed students who bring their ideas, wishes and perspectives to the Barberini in specially designed workshops together with interested parties aged between 16 and 25, will also be using the studio.

In addition to the studio, the atelier in the basement of the Museum Barberini will remain open. The popular creative workshops, in which painting, printing and drawing techniques can be explored, will continue to take place there. In summer, educational activities will also take place in the museum courtyard.

“Keeping our educational programme accessible, up-to-date and exciting for many people is particularly important to us at the Barberini,” explains Ortrud Westheider, Director of the museum. “With its flexible facilities and high-quality technical equipment, the studio in the neighbouring building of the Barberini provides 125 square metres of space for the high demand for sophisticated educational formats. We can further develop our approach to cultural education here, open up our museum to new target groups and contribute even more profoundly to the understanding of art, which ultimately always involves an understanding of the world.”

WHERE?

Museum Barberini
Humboldtstraße 5-6
14467 Potsdam