Out of the Box – 75 Years of the Archives of the Akademie der Künste
Guided Tour
1/6/2026, 5 PM

Caught between order and chaos, forgetting and remembering, the analogue and digital worlds, the Archives of the Akademie der Künste are confronted with immense challenges. The Archives create a living, open space of dialogue between art and science and collaboration across art forms.

To mark its 75th anniversary, an exhibition shares 75 stories – about memory work, the genesis of artistic works, the structure and organisation of cultural knowledge, and questions of transmission and missing items. In an age of “alternative facts” and artificial intelligence, the archives remain a beacon of reliable information and authentic sources. At the same time, they embrace new forms of artistic expression, media, storage and communication.

Iconic testimonies such as Walter Benjamin’s essay What is Aura?, love letters by Anna Seghers, Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, John Heartfield’s collages, Käthe Kollwitz’s diary or Mary Wigman’s dance notations speak of the aura of objects and the powerful role archives play in shaping the canon of memory work for generations to come.