Curated Route

Exploring the Creative Heart of Mitte

As you navigate the heart of Berlin’s Mitte district, you’ll find your attention drawn in every direction. To help focus your exploration, this guide offers a curated selection of venues that captures the cultural landscape of this creatively charged, ever-evolving area. From pop-up projects to blue-chip galleries, you’ll discover a diverse mix that truly reflects the spirit of Mitte.

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For an unconventional start to the tour, head to the central domed auditorium of the Veterinary School on Humboldt University’s North Campus. Here you’ll find the Tieranatomisches Theater (TA T), an exhibition space, stage for experimental presentations, and a curatorial lab that fosters the intersection of science, art, and design. In cooperation with TA T and N-solab, Galerie Georg Nothelfer presents ›uoaei‹, a sound installation by Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag.

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Next stop is Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), which introduces four exhibitions on 11 September. With ›Pier Paolo Pasolini: Porcili‹, it highlights the visionary life and career of the director, poet, and thinker, as well as the hardships he endured for his radical views and rebellion against social norms. At the n.b.k. Showroom, Pamela Rosenkranz presents a new site-specific installation, while the n.b.k. Facade project shows Santiago Sierra’s ›Der Zeitgeist‹. Additionally, a work by Yoko Ono is presented in public space as part of the n.b.k. Billboard series.

3
A short walk will take you to Fotografiska Berlin, an exhibition space for contemporary photography located in the historic building of the former Kunsthaus Tacheles. During Berlin Art Week, Fotografiska presents five solo exhibitions featuring works by Eli Cortiñas, Joanna Dudley, Josèfa Ntjam, Lukas Städler, and Andy Warhol. The program also includes artist talks, performances, and short film screenings. At the in-house Verōnika Restaurant, you can indulge in a fine dining experience, or enjoy a light bite and a bespoke cocktail in the more casual setting of the Verōnika Bar.

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Continue to the nearby ifa-Galerie, where Sara Ouhaddou’s solo exhibition ›Display‹ opens on 12 September. Featuring a diverse array of Moroccan crafts that were commissioned or produced collaboratively, ›Display‹ investigates how art and craft intertwine. The show will be accompanied by composer Leila Bencharnia’s sound installation, created in response to Ouhaddou’s work.

5
In the surrounding area, you can discover a plethora of art spaces. Not to be missed are three exhibitions at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art: ›Estufa‹ by Luiz Roque, ›Arctic Hysteria‹ by Pia Arke, and ›Ruins of Rooms‹ by Jimmy DeSana and Paul P. From 13 to 15 September, Sarah Aviaja Hammeken and Amina Szecsödy present their performances as part of the ongoing exhibitions by Arke and Roque. After the shows, take a short break at Bravo, a café and bar nestled within a sleek Dan Graham pavilion in KW’s leafy courtyard.

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Another must-see venue in the neighbourhood is Kunst Raum Mitte, a new iteration of the former galerie weisser elefant. On 12 September, the inaugural program ›Diffractions 2024‹ kicks off with the group exhibition ›Transforming‹, which places the spatial, material, and historical relationships of the location into new constellations. Curated by Agnieszka Roguski and Natalie Keppler, the show features artistic and discursive contributions by Jesse Darling, Robert Lippok, Minh Duc Pham, Isabel Lewis, and others.

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As you walk through the area, you might stumble upon artworks “in the wild” as part of  ›The Moment‹, a semi-nomadic exhibition project initiated by artist Olga Cerkasova, currently anchored in and around Berlin’s Ackerstraße. Expanding on the previous editions in Mexico City and Berlin, it presents ›Amnesia of Balance‹, a group show that addresses ways of forgetting and balancing current states and realities. Works by Dan Bodan, Merike Estna, and Helga Wretman, among others, are placed in the fifth-floor apartment turned exhibition space, and scattered in the surrounding public sphere.

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Sprüth Magers, the final stop on this art tour through Mitte, offers a more conventional display with two solo shows across its gallery floors. The first, ›Ahmedabad 1992‹, is an exhibition of mixed media assemblages by the late John Baldessari, created during his residency in India. Meanwhile, in his first solo exhibition in Germany, Oliver Bak presents paintings that construe enigmatic narratives by conflating fiction and reality, history and the present, mythology and life, the tangible and the subconscious.