Exhibition from April 28, to July 20, 2025
Opening: Sunday, April 27, 2025, 6:00 pm

With: Tina Bara, Sibylle Bergemann, Barbara Berthold, Yvon Chabrowski, Regina Fleck, Ellen Fuhr, Sabina Grzimek, Monika Hamann, Angela Hampel, Doris Kahane, Petra Kasten, Susanne Kutter, Ingeborg Lockemann, Barbara Lüdde, Emerita Pansowowa, Helga Paris, Nuria Quevedo, Evelyn Richter, Jana Richter, Ute Richter, Ricarda Roggan, Elske Rosenfeld, Karin Sakrowski, Christine Schlegel, Luise Schröder, Gundula Schulze, Maria Sewcz, Ulrike Theusner, Christine Wahl, Ulla Walter, Ute Weiss-Leder, Steffie Wendt, Karin Wieckhorst, Gabriele Worgitzki, Miro Zahra, Tanja Zimmermann

Curated by Andrea Pichl

The group exhibition Worin unsere Stärke besteht - to be continued ties in with current national and international discourses on the GDR.

Andrea Pichl combines eleven contemporary positions by female artists from different generations who were born in the GDR before the fall of the Wall with works by female artists from the Beeskow collection of art from the GDR. The works are characterised by a plurality of themes, media, approaches and experiences. The central theme of art in the GDR was the human figure - positively connoted and desired by the state. Andrea Pichl has selected works from the Museum Utopie und Alltag Beeskow that subtly oppose the ‘comprehensive harmonisation of everyday life and history and of the individual and class as a pacification strategy’ (Hildtrud Ebert) that was common in the GDR.

The exhibition is dedicated to the significance of biographies - not a narrative of the GDR or a historicisation of art from the GDR. Basically, it matters who comes from where. Artistic practices develop influenced by experiences and encounters. How does the course of biographies shape approaches to certain themes and which themes recur in different generations? Many of the artists represented in the exhibition work with the traces of their past that extend into the present by means of artistically organised archives.

The project is a continuation of the exhibition Worin unsere Stärke besteht. 50 Women Artists from the GDR, which Andrea Pichl curated at Kunstraum Kreuzberg in 2022. Structural mechanisms of exclusion in cultural and art institutions are still in place: Women are still underrepresented in art and culture. The works of female artists with a GDR background still rarely appear in contemporary exhibitions.

The exhibition is a co-operation project between Schloss Biesdorf and the Museum Utopie und Alltag Beeskow. The two institutions have been working together for many years with the aim of contextualising contemporary art from the GDR. Since 2021, the Museum Utopie und Alltag has united the collection of everyday culture of the GDR in Eisenhüttenstadt and the collection of art from the GDR in Beeskow. It houses 17,000 works of fine art and 1,500 objects of applied art and amateur art that were owned by the mass organisations of the GDR, such as the FDGB or the FDJ, before 1990. This art is part of the cultural memory and makes it clear that the state commissioning policy had many actors who did not always make decisions according to standardised guidelines. There are 380 women among the total of 1,700 artists.

An exhibition project by Schloss Biesdorf in cooperation with the Museum Utopie und Alltag, Beeskow.

Exhibition from May 26, 2025 to November 02, 2025 im Heino-Schmieden-Saal
Vernissage: Sunday, May 25, 2025 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm

Curated by Dr. Oleg Peters

To mark the 650th anniversary of the first documentary mention of Biesdorf and the 190th birthday of Heino Schmieden, Biesdorf Palace is exhibiting seven rediscovered drawings by the palace architect.

Heino Schmieden's buildings still characterize the urban face of Berlin today as important cultural monuments. 

The drawings by the former student were made 165 years ago, during a study trip through France lasting several months, financed by the prize money from the Schinkel competition. The travel sketches of sacred buildings are not only the earliest evidence of his artistic talent, they are also the architect's only surviving original pictorial works. They have only been presented once before, on the occasion of the memorial service for the exceptional architect who died in 1913 in the vestibule of the Kunstgewerbemuseum, now the Martin-Gropius-Bau.

The historian and curator of the exhibition, Dr. Oleg Peters, discovered the drawings during his many years of research into the life and work of Heino Schmieden with a great-grandson of the architect. Dieter Schmieden from Garmisch-Partenkirchen has now made these unique testimonies from Schmieden's pen available for the exhibition at Schloss Biesdorf.

Exhibition from August 4 to November 2, 2025
Opening: Sunday, August 3, 2025, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
with Klaus Estermann (poet and singer)

Finissage: Sunday, November 3, 2025, 04:00 p.m.
Magic show with Tobias Dostal

With: Sonja Alhäuser, Aljoscha, Deniz Alt, Emanuel Bernstone, Marc Bijl, Irina Birger, Sascha Boldt, Stephen Chambers, Sven Drühl, Marcus Eek, Thomas Fischer, Wineke Gartz, Daphne Glasmacher, Gregor Hildebrandt, Klaus Jörres, Elena Karakitsou, Hanna Mattes, Toshihiko Mitsuya, Jirka Pfahl, Römer + Römer, Femke Schaap, Sandra Schlipkoeter, Tracey Snelling, Veerle Thoben, Lukas Troberg, Atelier Van Lieshout, Jonas Vansteenkiste, Peter Vink, René Wirths, Sylvie Zijlmans & Hewald Jongenelis 

Curated by Römer + Römer

The Lumen exhibition brings together 30 multifaceted artistic signatures from the Netherlands and Germany. The respective artistic positions show an extraordinarily diverse spectrum of different media and perspectives in painting, photography, site-specific installations, video works or performances. Lumen is derived from the Latin and means ‘light’ or ‘opening’. In physics, the abbreviation lm stands for the unit of visible luminous flux; in anatomy, it refers to the interior of a vessel – an image for permeability. Lumen thus also becomes a metaphor for what becomes visible in the space between.

At the centre of the exhibition is the theme of light in all its manifestations: as sunlight or artificial light, technological innovation or atmospheric moment. Light creates presence, casts shadows, sets accents. It is both a material and a carrier of meaning – sensual poetic, experimental or speculative. 

The theme of the exhibition ties in with the exhibition venue, Schloss Biesdorf, in a special way: The late classicist villa in the east of Berlin was once the summer residence of Werner Siemens, one of the leading pioneers of electrification in the 19th century. In its spirit of technical innovation and social transformation, Lumen invites visitors to understand light as a cultural, physical and aesthetic force. The architecture of the building, surrounded by a heritage-protected park, creates a resonating space in which past and present, nature and technology enter into dialogue with each other.

The exhibition curated by the painting duo Römer + Römer arose from an inspired exchange with the Amsterdam light artist Peter Vink.

Event as part of the exhibition: Saturday, September 6, 2025 – Schlossrevue Into The Light. Further information on the programme accompanying the exhibition will soon be available here

The Lumen exhibition is sponsored by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and supported by the Berlin Municipal Galleries Exhibition Fund of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.