Tea and Dry Biscuits. An Anniversary Exhibition

The year 2025 marks the 75th anniversary of the Georg Kolbe Museum. The exhibition conceptualized for this occasion takes the founding moment of the institution as its starting point: it opened its doors in 1950 as the first new museum in post-war West Berlin. At the time, the museum was fashioned as a memorial to the sculptor Georg Kolbe, who died in 1947 and who had lived and worked in Sensburger Allee from the time the extraordinary ensemble was built in 1928 onwards. The studio rooms, which were opened to the public in 1950, had seemingly remained untouched since Kolbe’s death. Numerous sculptures on display provided an insight into the artist’s entire oeuvre. Kolbe’s personal objects stylized the working and living space into an elevated place of worship.

The exhibition focuses on the staging of memories and examines remembrance in its various forms – private and public. Contemporary artists open up diverse perspectives on the past and present through their own reflections on the subject. What was remembered in 1950? How and what do we remember today and what forms does this remembrance take?  On the one hand, the exhibition deals with a critical examination of the museum’s own institutional history, with imagined, perceived and lived (family) ties that had a lasting impact on the museum. On the other hand, the exhibition takes a self-reflexive look at the topic of museumization and the control, idealization and narration of history and memory.

With works by Georg Kolbe and Christian Borchert, Cao Fei, Ryan Gander, Itamar Gov, Heike Kabisch, Taus Makhacheva, Laure Prouvost, Hande Sever, Kaari Upson, Álvaro Urbano, Marion Verboom, Danh Vo and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt.

The group exhibition is part of a multifaceted program in the anniversary year 2025, which celebrates the Georg Kolbe Museum as a vibrant art space of learning and exchange.