Plain Language
KW Institute for
Contemporary Art
Philippe Van Snick, Dag/Nacht, 1984–ongoing, Installation view entrance gate, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Photo: Frank Sperling, Courtesy Tatjana Pieters
Welcome to the website of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, also known as Kunst-Werke Berlin, or KW.
Here you will find information for your visit.
The information has 4 parts:
- 1. The Institution – history and background
- 2. Information for your visit
- Directions
- Opening hours
- Admission
- Tours
- Parking
3. Accessibility
- 4. The exhibitions in summer 2023
- Enrico David – Destroyed Men Come and Go
- KW Production Series: Emily Wardill – Identical
- Hervé Guibert – This and More
1. The Institution
KW is short for KunstWerke. In English that means art works.
The KW Institute for Contemporary Art opened in 1991.
It produces and shows contemporary art.
These are works of art made by artists of today.
All of the exhibitions at KW look at present-day questions.
The exhibitions consider social and political questions. This starts with the works of art and goes on to look at the artist’s views on these questions.
The director of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art is Krist Gruijthuijsen. He and his team of curators are responsible for the exhibitions.
KW does not have its own collection. This means that it is free to create very different exhibitions. It sometimes asks artists to create works of art and then shows these works of art.
The KW Institute for Contemporary Art is well-known all over the world. It works with many artists and other institutions.
For example:
- MoMA PS1 in America
- Biennale di Venezia in Italy
- Documenta in Kassel, Germany.
2. Information for your visit
Directions
Our address: Auguststraße 69, 10117 Berlin
We recommend you use public transport. Parking is very limited.
Opening hours:
- Monday: 11 am to 7pm
- Tuesday: closed
- Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday: 11 am to 7 pm
- Thursday: 11 am to 9 pm
Tickets
You can only buy tickets at the ticket counter.
We only accept payment with a card.
The cards we accept are:
Girocard, Mastercard, Amex, VISA, Maestro, VISA Electron and ApplePay.
Ticket prices
8 Euros: Regular price
6 Euros: Reduced price
Visitors with disabilities (50% GdB)
Students
Visitors doing community service
BBK members
Holders of the Berlin Ehrenamtskarte
Please bring your identification with you.
6 Euros:
Berlin Welcome Card holders
Reduced Price: 4,50 €
4 Euros:
Holders of a Berechtigungsnachweis.
This permit used to be called the Berlin pass.
Free entry:
- Assistants of visitors with disabilities
- All visitors up to 18 years
- Holders of the KW Lover season ticket
- Friends of KW and Berlin Biennale
- Unemployed persons
Admission to the KW is also free for all visitors:
- Thursdays from 6 pm to 9 pm
- The first Sunday in the month (click here for more information)
With the KW Lover annual pass, you can visit all exhibitions free of charge for one year. The price for the annual pass is 35 euros, reduced 25 euros. You can purchase it in our online shop. Click here to go to the shop.
Guided Tours
There are KW Guides in our exhibitions Monday to Friday. KW Guides are staff members who provide free information about the artworks.
On weekends, we offer public tours of the exhibitions. These guided tours are not in Plain English.
The meeting point is at the KW ticket office.
The price for the guided tours is included in the exhibition ticket.
Please register for the guided tours at the ticket office in the entrance area.
Only a certain number of people can take part.
The guided tours take place in cooperation with the Museumsdienst Berlin.
Travel by public transport:
- By Train
S1, S2, S25, S26 to Oranienburger Tor.
KW is 200 metres from the train station.
The station has a lift to the exit Tucholskystraße
- By underground
Both stations have lifts
U6 to Oranienburger Tor
KW is 600 metres from the train station.
U8 to Rosenthaler Platz
KW is 750 metres from the train station.
Parking
Unfortunately, there are no parking spaces directly at KW. You can park your car in front of the main entrance of KW to get in or out.
However, there is a parking lot for people with disabilities directly in front of KW next to the bicycle racks. You can park here if you have a pass for people with disabilities and while we are open.
3. Accessibility
The building
The KW Institute for Contemporary Art is an old and protected building.
Because of this some of the building is not accessible to all visitors.
To plan your visit to KW, please email us a week before your visit at: mediation@kw-berlin.de
or call us on 030-24 34 59-132.
Spontaneous visits are also possible. Unfortunately, the lift cannot be used independently. Please allow up to 30 minutes waiting time for spontaneous visits.
Entrance to KW’s courtyard
The main entrance does not have any steps.
There is a concrete path to the courtyard. But the courtyard is made of cobblestones.
Lifts to other floors
There is a lift to the
- exhibition rooms
- Pogo Bar in the basement
- accessible toilet on the 4th floor
Unfortunately, it is not possible to use the lift independently. Please ask our staff at the ticket counter if you wish to use the lift.
The KW studio is at the front of the building.
It is not accessible to all visitors.
There are 15 steps with railings leading to the studio.
Café
Café Bravo is in the courtyard. The courtyard is made of cobblestones. The entrance to the café is at ground level.
The door does not open automatically.
There is seating available.
Ticket Counter
The ticket counter is at the back of the courtyard on the right.
There are two steps but we have a ramp for wheelchairs.
Our staff will help you.
Cloakroom
The cloakroom is on the ground floor near the ticket counter.
The cloakroom is free.
We also have lockers. You will need a 1 Euro coin to use a locker.
Wheelchairs
We have foldable stools and wheelchair.
If you wish to use a stool or wheelchair during your visit,
please reserve it before your visit.
Call us on 030-24 34 59-69.
Prams
You cannot take prams into the exhibition rooms.
Please leave prams on the ground floor near the ticket office.
Our staff will help you.
Information in Plain English
All our exhibition texts are also in Plain English. You can find the link to these texts on the pages of the exhibitions or pick up a printed version when you arrive.
Assistance during your visit
If you come alone, we are happy to offer you support.
Send us an email one week before your visit to: mediation@kw-berlin.de. You can also reach our mediation team at: 030 24 34 59 132.
If you come spontaneously, you will find a sign with a bell at the main entrance on the right. This bell is connected to the ticket office. If you use this bell, you will then be assisted to walk or drive through the courtyard and into Café Bravo.
Please be aware of possible waiting times if you come without prior registration.
Support and feedback
Please contact us and let us know how we can improve our service. You can send us
an email mediation@kw-berlin.de
or call us on 030-24 34 59-132.
4. The exhibitions in summer 2023
In fall 2023 you can visit three exhibitions at KW.
The exhibitions are:
Coco Fusco – Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island
Preis für künstlerische Forschung der Schering Stiftung 2022:
Kameelah Janan Rasheed – in the coherence, we weep
The exhibitions are open from 14 September 2023 to 7 January 2024.
Coco Fusco
Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island
14 September 2023 to 7 January 2024
Curators: Anna Gritz, Léon Kruijswijk
Assistant Curator: Linda Franken
Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island is the first big look back at the work of Coco Fusco, a Cuban American artist. For more than 30 years, Coco Fusco has been talking about themes such as race, women’s rights, the time after the colonial era, and criticism of institutions. In the colonial era, for example Cuba, was ruled by Spain and the United States of America. In 1902, Cuba became independent and was able to rule itself.
The exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art looks at the work Coco Fusco has done since 1990. The exhibition shows many videos, photos, texts, installations, and performances by the artist. This allows us to see how her work has influenced today’s art in Germany and many other countries.
In her work, Coco Fusco looks at how people show, share, and talk about art and visual culture. The exhibition deals with what has happened because of colonialism and imperial power. This is particularly important because it relates to political and cultural debates that are happening now in Germany. KW shows how Coco Fusco’s work is very complex and includes writing, activism, and performative work. Performative means that the artists create artworks through actions performed by the artist or other people taking part. Together with the ICI Berlin, KW is organizing a series of talks.
Coco Fusco is also working on a new performance for KW and the Sophiensaele with the title Antigone Is Not Available Right Now, which will be shown in December 2023.
This performance will include various media, for example images, videos, and music.
At the same time as the exhibition at KW, a publication on Coco Fusco’s work will be published by Thames & Hudson. It has contributions by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Anna Gritz, Jill Lane, Antonio José Ponte, and Coco Fusco herself.
Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research 2022: Kameelah Janan Rasheed
in the coherence, we weep
14 September 2023 to 7 January 2024
Curator: Sofie Krogh Christensen
Assistant Curator: Linda Franken
Kameelah Janan Rasheed was born in the US in 1985. She received a prize for her work in 2022. It is called the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research.
In her work, Rasheed looks at how we read, write, and understand text and language. She wants to find new ways of understanding something. She also asks questions about how we want others to read and understand us.
Rasheed changes the meaning of scientific texts and literary texts like books and poems by putting them together in different ways. For example, changing how words are arranged or how big they are. Rasheed looks at texts in detail. Perhaps she will change the size of the words, the sentence structure, or the number of periods in a text. She gets us to think about what making these changes does to the meaning of the text. And do the changes work in the same way in different types of text? For example, would a word that was written in a poem mean the same thing if it was written in a scientific text? What is a word trying to say or do?
Rasheed checks the texts again and again. She asks questions and learns together with other people. In this way, she creates a connection between politics and poetry and shows what is possible through language.
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, presents the first major solo exhibition of Kameelah Janan Rasheed. Both the exhibition and the book that goes with it are very similar to Rasheed’s way of working. They both look at the connection between language, knowledge, and learning. The book is co-published with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.
The Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research came from the Schering Stiftung Art Award, which was given to artists every two years from 2005 to 2018.In 2019, Schering Stiftung worked with the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community to change it to the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research. In 2022, the Award for Artistic Research was given in cooperation with KW for the seventh time.
SKIN IN THE GAME
Ruth Buchanan, Otobong Nkanga, Collier Schorr, Rosemarie Trockel, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Andrea Zittel
- 14 September 2023 to 7 January 2024
Curator: Clémentine Deliss
Assitant Curator: Nikolas Brummer
Exhibition design / choreography: Joëlle Tuerlinckx und Clémentine Deliss
SKIN IN THE GAME means to take a risk in life. The exhibition SKIN IN THE GAME shows prototypes from artists who are famous in many countries. The artists who created the work in the exhibition are Ruth Buchanan, Otobong Nkanga, Collier Schorr, Rosemarie Trockel, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, and Andrea Zittel. Many of the artworks and documents come from the artists’ personal collections, starting from the 1980s up to now. You can see experiments that no one has seen before, like paintings, sculptures, banners, videos, photos, collages, drawings, books, and notes. These artists focus on a moment when they risked everything for art. The experiments that they made are like the beginnings of larger works.
The artists keep coming back to them and exploring them. The artist will work on the piece again and again.
The artists have made new artworks for this exhibition. The exhibition design was created by Joëlle Tuerlinckx and Clémentine Deliss. It uses parts from a previous exhibition that was
on the 3rd floor of KW, like walls and wood pieces. It looks at how artists and their works talk to each other and also how the artworks can sometimes not get along.
The public program of the exhibition is called NERVES, BREATH, MUSCLES, BLOOD and will only be available at www.mm-u.online. It is part of the Metabolic Museum–University.
The exhibition uses old collections as examples for trying out new ideas. The focus is on looking at objects and inventing new stories. The program starts in September as an exhibition and online from October 11, 2023, at www.mm-u.online.
A book about the program will come out in November 2023. The book is called SKIN IN THE GAME. Conversations with Artists on Risk and Contention by Hatje Cantz and KW.
Metabolic Museum–University Program @mm-u.online: Christina Scheib mit Ollie George, Jakob Karpus, Felipe Meres, Joana Owona, Toby Üpson, Edi Winarni, Winnie Zhu
Website Design and Programming: Rana Karan & Cécile Kobel / Happyserver
The special chairs in the exhibition were designed by: Diane Hillebrand with Francesca-Romana Audretsch, Janina Capelle, Lizzy Ellbrück, Teresa Häußler, Cécile Kobel, Christina Scheib, MM-U 2018-19