Anniversary exhibition
8 October 2025 – 18 January 2026, opening 7 October 2025
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz

To mark the 75th anniversary of the creation of the archives at the Akademie der Künste, the institution is mounting the exhibition Out of the Box – 75 Jahre Archiv der Akademie der Künste at its Pariser Platz venue. Set to open on 7 October 2025, the exhibition offers unusual glimpses into an art archive’s history and collections and shows how important it is for authentic and reliable information to be made available in an age of “alternative facts”.

The title of the exhibition says it all: it features 75 objects selected from cardboard boxes and filing boxes, from drawers, cabinets and folders – these tell stories about the creation of artistic works and their reception history, about the structure and organisation of cultural knowledge, about transmission and lacunae and about the “power of archives” to determine the canon that will inform the memory work of future generations. These include iconic documents such as Walter Benjamin’s essay fragment “What Is Aura?”, Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, Günter Grass’ novel The Tin Drum, George Grosz’ satire Christus mit der Gasmaske, one of Käthe Kollwitz’ diaries, Nam June Paik’s video work Der Dom als Medium, Hermann Scherchen’s futuristic “Nullstrahler”, Anna Seghers’ love letters, and Mary Wigman’s notations documenting her expressionist dances.

The large-scale exhibition allows visitors to discover for themselves the particular allure of an art archive. The exhibits tell the stories not only of artists but also of archival work, which facilitates new ways of accessing material through the processes of selection, evaluation, organisation, and in-depth cataloguing. Numerous exhibits are on display that have hitherto been hidden away in storage: the 75 objects brought out of the archives for the first time, coupled with the stories associated with them, are indicative of the diversity and importance of the treasures that can be dug out of the archives at the Akademie der Künste.
“Out of the box” also tracks the intellectual processes of a wide variety of artists. The artworks on display illustrate how, in bucking traditional patterns of thinking, these works help set the agenda, provoking discussion and exerting a lasting influence on those exposed to them.

Comprising more than 1,400 archives of artists and numerous holdings from art institutions and associations, the archives at the Akademie der Künste are now regarded as the most important interdisciplinary collection relating to the art and culture of modernity in the German-speaking world. Anchored in an institution that was founded over 300 years ago, the archives are unique in the fact that they cover all the different artistic disciplines and bring together materials from the academies in both East and West Berlin.

The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of events and educational offerings, with book presentations, readings, family Sundays and workshop discussions, involving a range of contributors, including Kerstin Hensel, Regine Keller, Thomas Lehr, Teresa Präauer, Jean Radvanyi, Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Jördis Triebel, Cécile Wajsbrot, Johannes Walter, Volker Weidermann, Erdmut Wizisla and Christiane Zehl Romero.

A richly illustrated exhibition catalogue is also to be published with texts by Volker Braun, Werner Heegewaldt, Ursula Krechel, Georg Maurer, Steffen Mensching, Elisabeth Plessen, Manos Tsangaris and others.

Exhibition details

Out of the Box – 75 Jahre Archiv der Akademie der Künste
8 October 2025 – 18 January 2026
Opening times: Tue–Fr, 2–7 pm; Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, 11 am–7 pm
Admission: €10/7, free for under-18s and on Tuesdays
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Tel. 030 200 57-1000, info@adk.de

Opening Tuesday, 7 October 2025, 7 pm
With Wolfram Weimer, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Manos Tsangaris, President of the Akademie der Künste, Werner Heegewaldt, Director of the Archives of the Akademie der Künste

Press showing Tuesday, 7 October 2025, 11 am
Press images may be downloaded here

Press contact on behalf of the Akademie der Künste:
ARTEFAKT Kulturkonzepte, Stefan Hirtz and Ursula Rüther
Tel. 030 440 10 686, mail@artefakt-berlin.de

All documents are protected by copyright. The reprinting of texts and the copying of all other files is only permitted with the express permission of the Akademie der Künste or the authors themselves.