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| Baba Murah and Candomble Berlin |
Gropius Bau is doing it right. It's been a long time since I've experienced an ambiance in the Berlin art world as I did this weekend. Fun, open, and dynamic versus stagnant, exclusive, and old-fashioned. It's a mystery to me why Berlin institutions don't succeed in doing what in cities like London or New York comes easy. So what happened to Martin Gropius Bau? Stephanie Rosenthal happened, its new director, who immediately changed the name to Gropius Bau and kicked the first name "Martin" out. Bam!
What else did Stephanie Rosenthal do? She created an artist-in-residence program for the Gropius Bau, with the aim to bring creative processes into the space and reflect the notion of studio and workshop that was part of the original Museum of Decorative Arts.
Stephanie Rosenthal also made Gropius Bau central atrium accessible to the public without entrance fee. This weekend a free performance series Rituals of Care took place in the beautiful hall (still continuing over the next weeks). I went to see the rituals of healing by Baba Murah, the spiritual head of Berlin’s Candomblé Temple Ilê Obá Sileké. Unlike the "Hello World" farce in Hamburger Bahnhof, diversity is not thought of as "now we have to ship art works from India." Instead, it involves in the first place looking at the diversity already present and available in the own city Berlin. The program Rituals of Care has a beautiful balance of "local international" and international artists. Also the exhibition program for 2020 is diverse without even the need of screaming it from the roof top. It's just a normality as it should be.
Also the cafe changed. I think cafes are most important. It's one of the reasons why a place like Künstlerhaus Bethanien doesn't work (it has none). It's also something I would have advised Hamburger Bahnhof to do a long time ago: throw bloody Sarah Wiener out and let in the hipsters with good coffee (how hard is it to make a good cup of coffee?!). I did like the former traditional Gropius Bau cafe but I must say that when I asked people, nobody could remember it, which says something. Now the new cafe has the looks of hipster from Mitte with a lot of plants growing in displays (bringing along little flies). But a (good!) coffee costs 2.50, which is a reasonable price, and there was a great ambiance going on while I was sitting there. I actually sat at the cafe for about 2 hours with just a coffee and nobody complained :)
In both the cafe and the bookstore there are now doors that lead to the central hall. The energy is able to flow in the museum. The only down part is the König bookstore, which is totally mainstream with coffee table books and gadgets. Really sad how it didn't manage to be a good art bookstore you want to be in for hours. Now, I would suggest to avoid it. I'm actually a fan of gadgets (first thing I do when visiting the V&A is buying a V&A notebook and pen) but König doesn't even have the nice gadgets...
Another negative point is the entrance price for the exhibitions: 15 Euro for a single exhibition is a lot. It makes you think twice before going. Also, for some performances of the Rituals of Care program you need (free) tickets to enter, which wasn't clearly stated on the website. You also couldn't get them on the website but you needed to go to Gropius at 10am. But I'm sure these flaws will be solved in the future. For now, finally some light in the dull Berlin institutional art scene.