Berlin 2025 Pt.5: Art

Berlin is an incredible city to explore and to scratch your artistic itch.

With art in abundance throughout all the areas of the city with street, political and punk art seen throughout, coupled with major works housed in grandiose and industrial spaces, Berlin has something to offer everyone.

Museum fur Fotografie

I loved, loved, loved the Museum fur Fotografie, so much so that I have added it to my itinerary for my follow up Berlin trip later this year (2026).

It’s a very unassuming building from the outside but the interior architecture is just stunning.

Home to the Helmut Newton collection it spans his works from across the decades of his career.

If you aren’t familiar with his name you will undoubtedly recognise his works from the high gloss pages of the worlds top fashion magazines to physical advertising media.  He has been capturing celebrities from across the globe meaning his images capture moments in time and place.

For me his photos have a very fetish and overtly sexual feel to them. Think seductive legs encased in soft nylons and Thierry Mugler corsetry and you will get the vibe.

Fotografiska Berlin

In contrast to the sublime architecture of the MfF, Fotografiska Berlin makes the most of its industrial aesthetic, with high-vertigo inducing graffitied stairwells leading through a range of floors and exhibitions.

On the top floor was the Shepard Fairey exhibition. Found here was a large array of his political focussed works.

If you aren’t familiar with his “OBEY” posters and murals you will instantly recognise his style.

The exhibition was definitely worth the climb and I would highly recommend seeing it if you get the opportunity.

Groups BAU

Architecturally, Gropius BAU is by far my favourite gallery in Berlin. Such a beatiful building with a huge central area, carpeted in rich, deep burgundy carpet (my favourite colour).

This open space complimented the Diane Arbus exhibition, Constellation. With over 450 photographs, scattered across framed walls, surrounded by mirrored walls, it gave both a very expansive yet claustrophobic feeling.

Her photographs, many captured throughout her life in New York, were incredible, and protrayed a unique period of time across America

Berlinische Galerie

The first gallery I visited was the Berlinische Galerie. It’s a pleasant modern gallery, very open and light.

There were two main exhibitions here on my visit. One was the Monira Al Qadiri’s exhibition and the second, much larger exhibition, Kunst in Berlin 1880-1980, was focussed on German artists, from both sides of the iron curtain and in particular those who had been effected by life in Berlin during this period.

There were a wide range of styles on display, ranging from capture of life during the raging 20’s, where the glitz and glamour of caberet style bars, met with a renewed renaissance, to the rise of the GDR, the respressive and controlled idealogy of the socialist east, often creating underground. In comparison was the more western styled art (something which can also be seen currently at the Neue Nationalgalerie).

I felt very emotional when walking through the exhibition.

Neue Nationalgalerie

I actually visited the Neue Nationalgalerie towards the end of my visit. I don’t know if it’s because it’s in a soulless part of the city, or if I just couldn’t see the emotion of a lemon connected to a lighbulb, or a carefully wrapped VW Beattle, but I just found it dull and completely unispiring. I think the issue with contemporary art is that the wall blurb tries to tell you what you are meant to be looking at, when in fact, the majority of the stuff created in the 70s, 80s and 90s were fuelled by halucinogenics and copious amounts of cocaine.

I just wish for once the curators of a pile of rocks arranged in a circle on the ground, woulld speak the truth; that the artist was fucked on acid and had a deadline to meet. Then we can just appreciate their willingness to keep creating and hope that at some stage re-hab helped them through their “purple haze” period.

The other exhibition on at the NNG at the time was focussed on the surrealism movement and in particular the artists Ernst, Dali and Miro, but by then my ability to feel anything other than frustration and contempt for curator bullshit was enough and I quickly wove my way through it and back out in to the rain.

Art is meant to tell a story of the time, however without the ability to understand what they were feeling, or understanding the context of when the strokes were made and what the artists were going through, then it just doesn’t do it for me