Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart

Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
Invalidenstraße 50
10557 Berlin

Moving Multitudes

A fox inhabits the grounds of the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. Hinting at this presence the Hall 3 hosts artworks that explore how fugitive struggle is passed from individual cunning into the collective imaginary.

Artworks are arranged into a moving multitude such that the audience would need to join it in order to enter the space. Andean traveling altars stand or move in procession as a collective body, holding symbolic fragments as testimonials of Indigenous resistance. B.R. Ambedkar led the Mahad satyagraha in a collective walk to drink water from a public tank, nonviolently breaking unjust customary laws collectively. The Kuroshio warm ocean current connects shamanic knowledge across lands, moving with the current from shore to shore, and against colonial trade routes.

For a short period, the biennial brings non-adjacent terrains—the Lithium Triangle in the Andes, the Kuroshio ocean current, the Zomia hill regions in Southeast Asia, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia—into a single procession to reclaim international solidarity movements: to retrieve solidarity for all that we never were.

History of the building

Hamburger Bahnhof was founded as the Contemporary Art Museum of the Nationalgalerie collection in Berlin in 1996. Its name and structure point back to the building’s original purpose: It was first opened in 1846 as the terminus for the Hamburg-Berlin railway. However, the growing traffic volume in the early 20th century forced its closure after just 40 years, and it was repurposed as a museum for transport and construction in 1906. During World War II, the former station was damaged by air raids and battles for Berlin’s city center in April and May 1945. When Germany was divided during the post-war period, the former train station remained abandoned—a museum entirely without visitors—until the Berlin Senate acquired the building in 1984. Following extensive renovations in the mid-1990s, Hamburger Bahnhof reopened as home of the Nationalgalerie collection. Today, the museum collects contemporary art as the Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart and shows special exhibitions as well as presentations of the collection.