Henry Moore's sculpture, Large Divided Oval: Butterfly in front of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt
The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW[1]), in English House of World Cultures, in Berlin is Germany's national center for the presentation and discussion of international contemporary arts, with a special focus on non-European cultures and societies. It presents art exhibitions, theater and dance performances, concerts, author readings, films and academic conferences on Visual Art and culture. It is one of the institutions which, due to their national and international standing and the quality of their work, receive funding from the federal government as so-called "lighthouses of culture", from the Federal Minister of State for Culture and the Media as well as from the Federal Foreign Office. As a venue and collaboration partner, HKW has hosted festivals such as the transmediale, curatorial platforms, biennials such as the Berlin Documentary Forum, and mentorship programs such as Forecast. Since 2013, its interdisciplinary elaboration on the Anthropocene discourse has included conferences, exhibitions, and other artistic formats performed together with philosophers, scientists, and arstists, such as Bruno Latour and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.[2]
The Haus der Kulturen der Welt is located in the Tiergarten park, and directly neighbors the Carillon and the new German Chancellery. It was formerly known as the Kongresshalleconference hall, a gift from the United States, designed in 1957 by the American architect Hugh Stubbins as a part of the Interbau, an International Building Exhibition. U.S. President John F. Kennedy spoke here at a trade union meeting during his June 1963 visit to West Berlin. [3][4] On 21 May 1980, the roof collapsed, killing one (Sender Freies Berlin radio station journalist) and injuring numerous people.[5] The hall was rebuilt in its original style and reopened in 1987 in time for the 750-year anniversary of the founding of Berlin.
Henry Moore sculpture
Outside the entrance, Henry Moore's heaviest bronze sculpture, Large Divided Oval: Butterfly (1985–86), stands in the middle of a circular basin. Weighing nearly nine tons, it was his final major work, completed just before he died.[6] One of three public Moore sculptures in Berlin (the others being Three Way Piece No.2: The Archer (1964–65) at the Neue Nationalgalerie and Reclining Figure (1956) at the Akademie der Künste), Butterfly was initially a loan to (then West) Berlin in 1986, but the city council wanted the sculpture permanently, and asked Moore if he would donate it. The letter arrived just before his death and went unanswered. In 1988 it was sold by the Henry Moore Foundation to Berlin for 4.5 million Deutsche Mark (around $2.58 million at the exchange rate of the day), then a huge sum for a public sculpture. The sculpture was eventually badly damaged by a combination of environmental pollution and vandalism, and restored in 2010.[7]
In popular culture
On 2 September 1970, the Kongresshalle was the setting for the West German heat of TV's Jeux Sans Frontières.
Typical of Berlin's popular humor, Berliners have nicknamed the building Die schwangere Auster ("The pregnant Oyster") [8] or "Jimmy Carter's smile".
In 2005 the building served as an outdoor set for the science fiction action film Æon Flux.
Tiergarten is a locality within the borough of Mitte, in central Berlin (Germany). Notable for the great and homonymous urban park, before German reunification, it was a part of West Berlin. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform, Tiergarten was also the name of a borough (Bezirk), consisting of the current locality (Ortsteil) of Tiergarten plus Hansaviertel and Moabit. A new system of road and rail tunnels runs under the park towards Berlin's main station in nearby Moabit.
Transmediale, stylised as transmediale, is an annual festival for art and digital culture in Berlin, usually held over three to five days at the end of January and the beginning of February. transmediale takes the form of a conference, an exhibition, and a film and video programme that often contain or support performances and workshops. Throughout the year, transmediale is also involved in a number of long- and short-term cooperative projects. From its initial focus on video culture, it came to cultivate an artistic and critical dialogue with television and multimedia, emerging as the leading international platform for media art.
Barbara Morgenstern is a German electronic music artist, keyboardist and singer.
John Bock is a German artist. He studied in Hamburg, Germany and lives and works in Berlin.
N. N. Rimzon is an Indian artist known primarily for his symbolic and enigmatic sculptures. His metal, fiberglass and stone sculptures have won him international acclaim, though in recent years his drawings have gained recognition.
The Museum of European Cultures – National Museums in Berlin – Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation came from the unification of the Europe-Department in the Berlin Museum of Ethnography and the Berlin Museum for Folklore in 1999. The museum focuses on the lived-in world of Europe and European culture contact, predominantly in Germany from the 18th Century until today.
Eyal Sivan is an Israeli documentary filmmaker, theoretician and scholar based in Paris, France.
The Church of Holy Cross is a Roman Catholic parish church under the authority of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at 600 Soundview Avenue, Bronx, New York City, New York 10473. The rectory address is the same.
International Literature Award is a German literary award for international prose translated into German for the first time. The prize has been awarded annually by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the foundation “Elementarteilchen” since 2009. Winning authors receive €20,000 and the translators €15,000. The award has compared as the German near-equivalent of the Best Translated Book Award or Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. In 2020, due to COVID-19 pandemic, the award was given to all six shortlisted titles, with the prize money divided equally.
The Berlin Documentary Forum (BDF) was a biennale held at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Interdisciplinary in orientation, it engaged with the 'documentary’ across the fields of film, photography, contemporary art, performance, architecture and cultural theory.
Berlin is recognized as a world city of culture and creative industries. Numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation are representing the diverse heritage of the city. Many young people, cultural entrepreneurs and international artists continue to settle in the city. Berlin has established itself as a popular nightlife and entertainment center in Europe.
Edward Akrout is a Franco-British artist and actor.
Julie Tolentino is a visual and performance artist, dancer, and choreographer. Her work is influenced from an array of visual, archival, and movement strategies.
Geraldine Juárez is a Mexican and Swedish visual artist. She lives in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Hila Peleg is an international curator and filmmaker and the Dean of HaMidrasha – Faculty of the Arts starting September 2023. Peleg has curated solo shows, large-scale group exhibitions and interdisciplinary cultural events across the visual arts, film and architecture, in public institutions throughout Europe and internationally. She is also known for her documentary film work including her award winning feature film "A Crime Against Art" from 2007 and "Sign Space" from 2016.
Grada Kilomba is a Portuguese interdisciplinary artist and writer whose works critically examine memory, trauma, gender, racism and post-colonialism. She uses various formats to express herself ranging from text to scenic reading and performance. Moreover, she combines academic and lyrical narrative. In 2012, she was guest professor for gender and postcolonial studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Margarita Tsomou is a Greek-German dramaturgist, curator, performance artist, dancer and activist. She is an editor of pop feminist Missy Magazine, professor for contemporary theatre praxis at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences and curator for theory and discourse at theatre and performance center Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin.
Anselm Franke is a German curator, and writer. He was the head of Visual Art and Film at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt from 2013–2022.
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