The Fondest Memories from Berlin Art Week

»What I most like to look back on is last year: fifteen years of Galerie Tanja Wagner, celebrated right in the middle of Berlin Art Week. For me, that week captured exactly what makes Berlin Art Week special—openness, curiosity, and a sense of coming together. It’s one of the most important dates in Berlin’s art calendar: cultural venues open their doors, and you experience the city in all its diversity. I hope that openness remains—and that Berlin continues to be a place where art connects spaces and people.«
—Tanja Wagner, Galerie Tanja Wagner

»In 2016, my project initiative ›TACHO‹ took part in the presentation of the recipients of the Award for Artistic Project Spaces and Initiatives during Berlin Art Week. What I remember most are the bicycle tours of project spaces organised by the Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume. They bring the city, its neighbourhoods, and the visual arts together in a lasting way. Berlin Art Week brings the niches of the independent scene into view, strengthening the project spaces and initiatives that have shaped Berlin as a centre for art for many years.«
—Christof Zwiener, Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume und -initiativen

»Berlin Art Week 2020 and 2021 remain especially vivid in my memory. They marked the beginning of my time as Artistic Director of KINDL, and despite the bleakness of the pandemic, there was also a palpable sense of new beginnings. With the support of Berlin Art Week, we pulled off a thrilling, spectacular opening in 2020, featuring Nik Nowak, Lerato Shadi, Ann Oren, and the group exhibition ›The Invented History‹. The following year brought another highlight, when the Berlin Art Week Garten came to our site with Sol Calero’s wonderful walk-through installation.«
—Kathrin Becker, Kindl—Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst 

»One of my highlights was the 2015 opening, when a group of volunteers and 12.5 tonnes of ice helped us build Allan Kaprow’s happening ›Fluids‹ on the terrace of the Neue Nationalgalerie. At first, the ice was opaque, then it gradually became transparent and continued to change beautifully throughout Art Week. The work made palpable both the unique, collective moment and the fleeting nature of art exhibitions in a particularly striking way. Perhaps that also sums up Berlin Art Week, which each year brings together so many wonderful exhibitions by such a wide range of players. Both are and remain essential to Berlin.«
—Lisa Marei Schmidt, Brücke Museum

»We’ve been part of Berlin Art Week from the very beginning and have watched its remarkable development over the years. A particular highlight for us came exactly ten years ago, when we accompanied the opening at Kino International with works from our collection. Outside, the display cases featured videos by Bruce Nauman, while the cinema screened an engaging programme of video works throughout the night, drawing visitors well past midnight.«
—Barbara und Axel Haubrok, Haubrok Foundation

»For many years, Berlin Art Week has marked the start of C/O Berlin’s most important exhibition season each September. Every year, it places contemporary art in Berlin centre stage and brings together people from the city and around the world. One moment that stands out in my memory is the opening of our exhibition ›Dream On – Berlin, the 90s‹ in 2024, which became the most successful exhibition in C/O Berlin’s history. I look forward to many more years of the festival bringing together people, places, and artistic positions across Berlin.«
—Stephan Erfurt, C/O Berlin

»The moment that’s stayed with me most is the Performance Night that Cathrin Hoffmann and I organised in Wrangelkiez in 2025, when, for one evening, it felt like 1999 again and anything seemed possible. Overall, Berlin Art Week feels like days of extreme social endurance sport in a Waldorf kindergarten—I love it! My wish for the festival is that it receives enough funding to leave plenty of budget and space for experimentation and subculture. Because without the strange, the messy, the marginal—the things that make you wonder, »Is this art or is it rubbish?«—even an art metropolis will eventually become nothing more than thoroughly gentrified decoration.«
—Sophia Süßmilch, Artist

»More than almost any other event, Berlin Art Week embodies the creative, cosmopolitan, and international spirit of Berlin for me. I especially enjoy looking back on the opening in 2025 on the steps of Hamburger Bahnhof. Another highlight was visiting the Feuerle Collection—an extraordinary place that, despite living in Berlin, I hadn’t really discovered before. Every year, Berlin Art Week demonstrates how art brings people together and opens up new perspectives. Looking ahead, I hope that culture will continue to receive the recognition it deserves for the role it plays in bringing people together in our city, even in times of tight public budgets.«
—Carsten Jung, Chairman of the Board, Berliner Volksbank eG

»In September 2022, my first year in Berlin, our long table at Kulturforum, the festival ›Perform!‹ initiated by Neue Nationalgalerie, and the Berlin Art Week Garten all came together to create a full blown art festival. It was an important moment for me, because I grew up in a small town with no museums, where art played no role in everyday life. But once every summer, there was an art festival—and suddenly, art was very present. That childhood experience had a profound impact on me. There is something uniquely inclusive and inviting about the atmosphere of such a festivals: they break down barriers, draw you in, and suddenly new horizons open up. Once you have experienced art so directly and in person, you see and think about the world differently.«
—Klaus Biesenbach, Neue Nationalgalerie

»My most memorable Berlin Art Week moment was performing ›Venus‹ in front of the Neue Nationalgalerie for the 2023 opening. The scale and energy of the audience made me redo the dramaturgy in real time. Berlin Art Week reflects Berlin’s openness to experimentation and exchange across artistic fields. I hope the city continues to support independent practices and ambitious live work alongside exhibitions. Berlin Art Week is when you can experience the city’s artistic energy at its most concentrated. It’s less about seeing everything than about discovering unexpected connections between people, places, and practices.«
—Göksu Kunak, Artist

»One of my favourite Berlin Art Week moments came in 2024, when we opened Rirkrit Tiravanija’s major solo exhibition as part of the festival—with cooking sessions, table tennis, and karaoke in the Lichthof. It was loud, lively, full of energy and unexpected encounters: exactly what I envision for Gropius Bau. Berlin Art Week creates countless moments like these and captures what defines Berlin as an art city: openness, curiosity, plurality, and a fascinating local art scene.«
—Jenny Schlenzka, Gropius Bau

»One Berlin Art Week moment I always look back on with particular fondness is the Gisèle Vienne project that Georg Kolbe Museum realised together with Haus am Waldsee and Sophiensæle in 2024—which was promptly named one of the best exhibitions of the year in Europe. It also marked the last time the Senate provided dedicated funding for collaborations between Berlin institutions beyond the city centre, enabling them to develop innovative, cross-disciplinary formats together. It is precisely for this reason that Berlin Art Week plays such an important role in the city. It encourages a broad and diverse audience to discover art spaces that may be entirely new to them, that they may never have visited before, or to experience familiar venues through a fresh programme and a new perspective. Alongside Gallery Weekend in the spring and the Biennale, which takes place every two years, Berlin Art Week is one of the key moments to visit the city’s institutions, see where they stand, and discover what ideas and questions they are engaging with. Berlin remains one of Europe’s—and the world’s—outstanding art capitals. Berlin Art Week makes that visible, and I look forward to many inspiring editions in the years to come.«
—Kathleen Reinhardt, Georg Kolbe Museum

»My highlights of 2025 were Tauba Auerbach’s first exhibition at Esther Schipper—an artist I’ve been in close dialogue with for many years and with whom I’ve loved spending time in Berlin—as well as Mark Leckey’s brilliantly curated, haunting and deeply affecting exhibition at the Julia Stoschek Foundation. Berlin Art Week brings together international visitors and the local art scene, making for an exciting and eventful week across the city. Looking ahead, I hope Berlin continues to preserve this spirit of enthusiasm, openness, and courage in order to protect spaces for artistic freedom.«
—Emma Enderby, KW Institute for Contemporary Art

»My project space Die Möglichkeit einer Insel has taken part in the ›Featured‹ section of Berlin Art Week every year since 2022. I loved all the opening events and the Garten. My highlight in 2025 was the opening of ›Industrial Witchcraft‹, an exhibition conceived by Oliver Koerner von Gustorf. What I really associate with it, though, is a kind of odyssey through a sea of bureaucracy: somehow managing to get a work by a member of Throbbing Gristle from Great Britain through all the customs hurdles.
Compared with Gallery Weekend, I find Berlin Art Week much more accessible, open, and welcoming to anyone interested in art. I hope it stays that way.
The ›Featured‹ section is a must!«
—Stephanie Kloss, Artist