Hello World. Revising a Collection

Hello World. Revising a Collection is a critical inquiry into the predominantly Western focus of the collection of the Nationalgalerie: what would the collection look like today, had a more open and inclusive understanding of art characterised its genesis? How might the art historical canon and the historical narratives themselves have been transformed, thereby widening and multiplying perspectives? Taking these questions as its starting point, the exhibition unfolds in 13 thematic chapters and builds a pluri-vocal collaboration between internal and external curators. Hello World encompasses the entire exhibition space of the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, the Nationalgalerie’s site for contemporary art.

Hello World places the focus on transnational artistic networks and cross-cultural exchanges from the late 19th century to the present. Numerous works from the collection of the Nationalgalerie provide points of departure for multiple narratives. These stories include Heinrich Vogeler’s path to the Soviet Union, Dadaist Tomoyoshi Murayama’s sojourn in Berlin in the 1920s, and the collaborations between Nicolás García Uriburu and Joseph Beuys.

More than two hundred works—paintings, sculptures, installations, videos and films—from the holdings of the Nationalgalerie are comple­mented by approximately one hundred and fifty works on loan from other collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz: Ethnologisches Museum, Kunstbibliothek, Kupferstichkabinett, Museum für Asiatische Kunst and the Zentralarchiv as well as the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. In addition, 400 artworks, magazines and documents are presented in the exhibition from national and international collections. In total, the show features artworks by more than 250 artists.

Today, the Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin encompasses five museums: Alte National­galerie, Neue Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen, Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg and Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin. Its extensive holdings date from the late 18th century to the present and reflect the turbulence and highpoints of this period. Founded in 1861, several artworks in the collection were classified as “degenerate” by the Nazis, a verdict which inevitably led to their removal or destruction. Germany’s division after World War II also left its traces: while the Nationalgalerie in the west of Berlin shifted its attention to Western European and North American art, the Nationalgalerie in the eastern part of the city concentrated on German art. Hello World is the first exhibition to explicitly call into question the Eurocentric character of the Nationalgalerie’s collections, opening up a discussion on how a museum collection can reposition itself today.

The exhibition was developed by Udo Kittelmann with Sven Beckstette, Daniela Bystron, Jenny Dirksen, Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Gabriele Knapstein, Melanie Roumiguière and Nina Schallenberg for the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, with guest curators Zdenka Badovinac, Eugen Blume, Clémentine Deliss, Natasha Ginwala and Azu Nwagbogu.

On the occasion of the exhibition an extensive program of events, performances, discussions, and artists talks will take place. A catalogue will be published by Hirmer Verlag in June 2018.

An exhibition by the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as part of its Global Museum initiative.