Since the mid-60s Michael Ruetz has observed the transformation of Berlin in a large-scale photographic study. Historical sites such as the Brandenburg Gate have undergone radical change, particularly since 1989/90. Ruetz’ images of Berlin are an expression of how architecture can redefine our environment. His photo series develop their own aesthetics beyond documentary sobriety, revealing a poetry of time in the process.

The Chilean artist Sandra Vásquez de la Horra is the recipient of the 2023 Käthe Kollwitz Prize. Her work addresses archetypes derived of our collective consciousness, taboos, gender issues and sexuality, intercultural reflections and questions of spiritual practice. At the Akademie der Künste, she is showing over 60 selected drawings, photographs and objects that unfold in a site-specific installation.

This issue says goodbye to the Akademie’s outgoing president and vice-president Jeanine Meerapfel and Kathrin Röggla, thematises possibilities for utopias in times of crisis, discusses the current political shift to the right in Germany and provides an outlook on the upcoming exhibition by Käthe Kollwitz Prize winner Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, as well as archive insights on István Szabó, George Grosz and Jürgen Flimm.

The Akademie der Künste has one of the largest Exile Archives on art and literature in any German-speaking country, with over 300 artistic estates and collections from or on artists who emigrated under the Nazi regime. The exile archives are part of the founding history of the academies in East and West Germany after 1945, with the aim of retrieving and rehabilitating the work of the persecuted artists.

Bertolt Brecht's study, Helene Weigel's conservatory, Anna Seghers' “crow's nest” : Regular tours offer visitors a chance to view the homes and studies of the writer Bertolt Brecht, actress and theatre director Helene Weigel and the writer Anna Seghers, largely kept in their original condition. The tours provide an insight into how these three major international figures in the arts world of the 20th century lived and worked.

The Akademie der Künste is an international community of artists that currently totals 435 members in its six Sections Visual Arts, Architecture, Music, Literature, Performing Arts, Film and Media Arts. It is an exhibition and event location. Its Archives collectively form one of the most important interdisciplinary archives on 20th century art. Founded in 1696, the Akademie der Künste in Berlin is one of the oldest cultural institutes in Europe.