
Art walk through Berlin-Mitte
Galleries & Exhibitions
Berlin has Europe's highest density of galleries. In the centre of the city, in Berlin-Mitte, the heart of the art scene beats particularly loudly. Since the fall of communism, the Scheunenviertel has housed numerous galleries of international standing.
With Auguststrasse as the epicentre, a landscape of up to 600 predominantly small galleries has established itself here over the years. And our hotel guests: right in the middle of it!
In view of the huge number of art collections and exhibitions, we would like to make your choice a little easier and present 11 galleries. All of them can be reached on foot from our hotel in max. 13 minutes and present a rough cross-section of the variety of galleries in Berlin-Mitte.
Here you will find an overview of the galleries:
Hiltawsky Gallery (2 minutes walk)
CWC Gallery (2 minutes walk)
KW Institute for Contemporary Art (2 minutes walk)
White Elephant Gallery (3 minutes walk)
Gallery Deschler (4 minutes walk)
Galerie Neu (4 minutes walk)
Gallery Art Cru (5 minutes walk)
art box berlin (9 minutes walk)
Romanian Cultural Institute(10 minutes walk)
Boros Collection (11 minutes walk)
Sturmwerke Gallery (13 minutes walk)
Hiltawsky Gallery
Photographic art of yesterday and today
Time travel is possible - at least with Christan Hiltawsky. After eight successful years as a gallery owner in Hamburg, he founded his gallery in the capital in 2009.
The focus is on the classic black and white photography of the 20th century. Here you will encounter positions of influential artists such as Frank Horvat, Roswitha Hecke or René Groebli.
But contemporary photographic art can also be found in exhibitions by Elisabeth Sunday, Greg Gorman and Olaf Heine, who have already represented this younger generation of master photographers in exhibitions.
Hiltawsky Gallery - 2 minutes walk
Tucholsky route 41
10117 Berlin
CWC Gallery
New Art in the Former Jewish Girls' School
Since 2012, the Former Jewish Girls' School has been home to the CAMERA WORK CONTEMPORARY Gallery, or CWC Gallery for short. This gallery is part of CAMERA WORK, one of the world's leading galleries, which owns one of the largest private collections of photographic art.
In contrast to the "Mother Gallery", the CWC Gallery primarily shows contemporary photography, but also painting and sculpture. In its beautiful, bright rooms, the gallery presents works by international photographers.
Besides Rankin, one of the most famous contemporary fashion photographers, Steve Schapiro is one of them. Shots from Hollywood's film scene made him famous. Woody Allen, Marlon Brando or Barbara Streisand were in front of the US-American. At the same time, he documents contemporary history with photos by Martin Luther King or John F. Kennedy.
CWC Gallery - 2 minutes walk
August route 11-13
10117 Berlin
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Politics, society, art
Here it runs "like clockwork": Klaus Biesenbach - known to art connoisseurs as chief curator at the Museum for Modern Art in New York - founded the Kunst-Werke in a former margarine factory together with young art lovers at the end of the 1990s. In a very short time, the gallery gained international recognition.
The gallery is dedicated to contemporary art and cultural discourse. Art exhibitions always see KW as a space for reflection on political and social issues.
KW Institute for Contemporary Art - 2 minutes walk
August route 69
10117 Berlin
Gallery White Elephant
Address for young Berlin artists
The portfolio of the gallery whiter elephant is characterized by installations, photography and video art, partly accompanied by electronic minimal music. The municipal gallery prefers to show young artists from Berlin and thus also sees itself as a promoter of young artists.
Since GDR times, the gallery has offered them a platform. The artistic director Ralf Bartholomäus can look back on numerous artistic careers that began in his rooms.
The mission is always: open your eyes, surprise with art and guide your thoughts far away from everyday life. In this tradition, the Gallery will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2017.
gallery white elephant - 3 minutes walk
August route 21
10117 Berlin
Gallery Deschler
Tradition in dialogue with innovation
The focus of Galerie Deschler is on technically innovative explorations of artistic tradition. For example, founder Marcus Deschler showed on his 250 sqm exhibition space how oil painting can be automated, or pictures realized with technical support.
Patricia Waller's art provokes traditional thinking in a new way. In the gallery rooms as in the gallery owner's apartment above, the eye quickly sticks to her polarizing crochet work.
Sculptures and sculptures by visual artists such as Gerhard Kehl and Deborah Sengl also play with viewing habits and expectations, rounding off the portfolio of the gallery, which has been firmly established since the 1990s.
Galerie Deschler - 4 minutes walk
August route 61
10117 Berlin
Gallery New
Contemporary art in classical prefabricated housing
Galerie Neu is located in a prefabricated building and heating and power station.
In search of a very special location, the gallery team of Thilo Wermke and Alexander Schröder found that 2014 right here and has successfully exhibited behind a washed concrete facade ever since.
Contemporary artists of international renown bring colour to the prefabricated building. Among them are Kai Althoff, celebrated in the USA as a star of contemporary art, or the British artist Merlin Carpenter.
The baptismal name "New" is always on the agenda: Wermke and Schröder are not on the trail of the zeitgeist, but one step ahead. They also made it across the Atlantic to New York, where star gallery owner Barbara Gladstone dedicated an entire exhibition to her German colleagues.
Their object: the disassembled old home of the "New", a former horse stable with a wooden roof that was once located on the grounds of the Charité.
Galerie Neu - 4 minutes walk
Route 119 abc
10115 Berlin
Gallery Art Cru
Accessible Art
As the first of its kind in Berlin, the Art Cru Gallery exhibits works by people with disabilities or mental illnesses - people who are often denied access to the established art scene.
The gallery's goal is to remove the artificial distance between "Outsider Art" and established art forms - with success. And thus joins a series of trade fairs such as the "Outsider Art Fair" in New York and Paris. Art prizes such as the "euward", the "European Prize for Painting and Graphics in the Context of Mental Disability", also bear witness to the increasing popularity of art, which is based precisely on the artists' unconventional style.
"Outsider Art" shows itself in the most diverse forms of play from conceptual to intoxicating. With its unpredictable diversity, this "outsider art" represents a living enrichment of the art scene.
Gallery Art Cru - 5 minutes walk
Oranienburger STR. 27
10117 Berlin
art box berlin
Young gallery, lasting impression
Founded in 2013, art box berlin is an integral part of the creative scene in the capital. The young gallery focuses on late 20th and 21st century art, with Pop Art occupying an outstanding position.
The gallery is Germany's largest exhibition space for works by Devin Miles. As one of the main representatives of Contemporary German Pop Art - that contemporary interpretation of the cheerful, socially critical form of expression of the 1950s from the USA - the artist creates a new perspective on the art movement from a combination of the most diverse techniques such as airbrush and screen printing.
art box berlin - 9 minutes walk
Reinhardt route 7
10117 Berlin
Romanian Cultural Institute
Romania's art scene is young, experimental and multi-faceted. The Romanian Cultural Institute shows the diversity of the Romanian art business in monthly changing exhibitions, in dance, theatre, literature as well as in scientific-academic events.
The country has a long intellectual and artistic tradition. A major driving force: Titu Maiorescu. As a politician, philosopher, writer and literary critic, the patron saint of the Cultural Institute gave cultural life in Romania enormous impetus at the turn of the century.
Romanian Cultural Institute Titu Maiorescu - 10 minutes walk
Reinhardt route 14
10117 Berlin
Boros Collection
Art in the Bunker
More than 25 years ago, agency owner and head of publishing Christian Boros became infected with art collection fever. Today, together with his wife, he shows selected treasures from their considerable collection of contemporary works of art in the converted former civilian shelter on an area of 3,000 square metres.
It is often precisely those works in the Boros Collection that are not immediately appealing, irritating or bulky.
In addition to works by "Young British Artists" such as Damien Hirst, these include portraits of Elizabeth Peyton and varied works by the Dane Ólafur Elíasson.
You can visit the collection from Thursday to Sunday in guided tours by appointment.
Boros Collection - 11 minutes walk
Bunker, Reinhardtstr. 20
10117 Berlin-Mitte
Gallery Sturmwerke
Spontaneity & Fun of Storm
Collecting - that is also the art of the Berlin-by-choice Rolf Sturm. With a wink for something special in the trivial, the almost 80-year-old with his long grey hair turns finds into works of art. The casing is reborn as a Hungarian dancer or flotsam turns into graceful figures.
In his gallery you immerse yourself in a chaotically inspiring wonder world and experience the artist live in his workshop. Paintings by his wife Renate Herbst-Sturm and daughter Nora Sturm form an attractive addition to the art of the remains.
Gallery Sturmwerke Berlin - 13 minutes walk
Albrechtstrasse 18
10117 Berlin