Fall in Berlin has always been about art and music. This year, the city is launching its first Berlin Art Week, a major city-wide show case and market place featuring the best in contemporary art. In addition, the Third Berlin Music Week will heat up the clubs and stages in trendy Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district.
Here are the highlights:
1. ART WEEK BERLIN
Poised to become a new highlight of the international art scene, the first Berlin Art Week is bringing the city’s major September art events under one heading, and underscores the German capital’s importance as an emerging center for high quality art. Succeeding ArtForum Berlin, Berlin Art week will present the Eighth Preview Berlin Art Fair, which showcases international newcomers as well as established galleries at the historic Tempelhof Airport. At the same time, abc – art berlin contemporary will be artist-centered, with more than 150 individual presentations of contemporary artists, and providing a platform for around 30 international creative organizations, including publishers, film, architecture, music and urban planning.
Numerous Berlin art institutions, including the New National Gallery, KW Institute for Contemporary Art and the Academy of the Arts, as well as local galleries, will stage special exhibitions when this major art spectacle plays out to thousands of local and international collectors and art enthusiasts. September 11-16, 2012.
2. STROKE, URBAN ART FAIR
Spotlighting the designs of everyday city streetscapes, this fair will present the best of urban art, including graffiti, tags and tattoos, at the Postfuhramt location in Berlin. The fair deliberately sets itself apart from the traditional, commercial art market and focuses on the diversity of urban art and culture. The various events will be staged by the different exhibiting galleries, projects and live performers. In 2011, some 60,000 attended this unique event. September 13-16, 2012.
3. BERLIN MUSIC WEEK
For the third time this fall, Berlin’s Friedrichhains-Kreuzberg district will become the epicenter of the Music Week, when musicians, DJs, producers and promoters celebrate the modern music scene, covering various genres and nationalities. The many live acts at the city’s best-known hotspots include The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Kraftklub and Paul Kalkbrenner. More than 40 clubs will open their doors to partiers and night owls. September 5-9, 2012, program, event tickets and line-up information at www.berlin-music-week.de.
4. YADEGAR ASISI’S 360° BERLIN WALL
Artist Yadegar Asisi, well-known for his monumental 360° panorama of the ancient city of Pergamon at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, has done it again: Starting September 22, Asisi will take Berliners and visitors back to the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Displayed in a cylindrical steel rotunda at Checkpoint Charlie, a 360° panorama will show an East Berlin autumn day in the 1980s, complete with ramshackle house facades, playing children, and GDR guards patrolling the border between the two German states. From September 22, 2012.
5. KARL FRIEDRICH SCHINKEL – ARCHITECT OF BERLIN
From the Neue Wache guardhouse on Unter den Linden, to Museum Island’s Old Museum and the Schauspielhaus theater on Gendarmenmarkt, the buildings designed by classicist architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel are among the most famous in Berlin. Schinkel, however, did not only work as an architect; he devoted himself to painting and drawing as well as designing stage sets. Well-known and lesser-known works by the artist will be on view at the Culture Forum from September 7, 2012 through January 6, 2013.
6. ANCIENT EGYPT AT THE NEUES MUSEUM
Regarded as the most beautiful woman in Berlin, the bust of Egyptian queen Nefertiti is celebrating her 100th anniversary this year. Discovered during excavations by the German Oriental Society in Tell Amarna on December 6, 1912, the bust has been on display at the museum since 1913. In celebration of the anniversary, the Neues Museum is staging a special exhibition on the Amarna period that characterized both Nefertiti and the pharaohs Akhenaten and Tutankhamon. December 7, 2012 through April 4, 2013.