Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin features rotating exhibitions

By April MacIntyre Dec 29, 2010, 20:08 GMT

Since 1996 the tourist attraction houses the National Gallery\'s Museum fuer Gegenwart, a contemporary art museum. Baselitz\'s sculpture is part of the museum\'s own collection, belonging to the Berlin entrepreneur Erich Marx. The collection is showcased in a series of rotating exhibitions on the 10,000 square meters of space, parallel to temporary exhibitions. AP Photo/Gero Breloer.

The Hamburger Bahnhof has housed the National Gallery's 'Museum für Gegenwart' or 'Museum of Now' in Berlin, Germany since 1996.

The museum also presents works from its own important collections in a serious of rotating exhibitions on the 10,000 square meters of space.  According to the museum, the ground floor of the main building sees samples on display of Fluxus, Vienna Actionism and happenings, all movements that played an important role in the radical changes in art in the 1960s.

In the west wing are the body of works by Joseph Beuys, including sculptural pieces and works on film.

This world-class collection is an impressive display of the extent to which Beuys' strove to broaden the concept of art. Parallel to this, key works from the extensive Sammlung Marx collection are on show in the Kleihueshalle on the ground floor, where, alongside Andy Warhol's famous portraits of stars and such influential celebrities as Elvis Presley or Mao Tse Tung, important works by Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly are also on display.

An entire room is also dedicated to works by Anselm Kiefer, whose art directly addresses German history and such themes as remembrance and memory.

The Rieckhallen contain works from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection on display in the Hamburger Bahnhof, a collection of around 2000 prize works of contemporary European and North American art that the museum presents in rotating exhibitions.

In these halls 1 and 2, are minimalist and post-minimalist artworks on display, including works by Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and John McCracken, as well as by Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra.

These works form a dialogue with those by more contemporary figures such as Heimo Zobernig, Manfred Pernice or Rachel Khedoori. In stark contrast to minimal art's clear forms and smooth surfaces are the sprawling structure of Dieter Roth's 'garden sculpture' (1968ff.) and the fragility of the carcasses in the works by Bruce Nauman and Nikolaus Lang in halls 3 and 4 of the building.

In hall 5, the monumental sculpture 'Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care' (1984) by Bruce Nauman is on show and invites visitors to edge their way through it.

HAMBURGER BAHNHOF - MUSEUM FÜR GEGENWART - BERLIN
Invalidenstraße 50-51
10557 Berlin
Germany
Tel. +49 - (0)30 - 3978 3411
Fax +49 - (0)30 - 3978 3413
E-Mail: hbf@smb.spk-berlin.de

Information Hamburger Bahnhof: 030 - 266 42 42 42