Categories
Subjects
Authors
Artists
Venues
Locations
Calendar
Filter
Done
September 10, 2010 – Review
Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin
Michèle Faguet
Sometime in the wee hours of September 1, 2010, the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, true to its name, permanently closed its doors. Initially weary of its program, the TKB’s audience had become massive—if not always enthusiastic—during the course of the institution’s brief, yet tumultuous, history. Over 200,000 visitors drawing both from the city’s cultural set (artists, curators, writers) as well as its sizeable tourist population (flocking from Museum Island directly across the road) attended the nine exhibitions and five project room shows (with many more thousands seeing the three façade projects)—impressive numbers that nevertheless fell short of patron Dieter Rosenkranz’s much publicized wish for 1,000 visitors daily to the (million-Euro) white cube his private foundation, Stiftung Zukunft Berlin, had made possible.
The story has been told countless times in the local press and goes something like this. During the last days of the iconic Palast der Republik—a GDR cultural center and former home to the East German parliament, demolished in 2008 amidst a slew of controversy—the skeleton of the building served as a makeshift venue for events. Most notable was the DIY week-long exhibition “36x27x10,” curated by Thomas Scheibitz, featuring a vast line-up of international artists residing in Berlin, many of whom …