Newsletter June 26 

Symposium
Culture in Transition: The Three Art Universities in Eastern Berlin

When it comes to research into the transformation of society in eastern Germany since 1989/90, growing attention is being paid to changes within the education sector. The symposium of the weissensee school of art and design berlin (KHB), the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin (HFM), and the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts (HfS), in cooperation with the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (ZZF), offers the first comparative examination of the transformations experienced by these three artistic institutions in eastern Berlin. What hopes and anxieties accompanied this political change? How did students and lecturers experience debates surrounding personnel, curricula and visions for the future of their institutions? Was institutional restructuring simply a matter of adopting Western models, or were key traditions preserved and further developed? The symposium is an event on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the weissensee school of art and design berlin. Thursday, 4 June 2026, from 3 pm, in the auditorium of the weissensee school of art and design berlin

Program and registration

Exhibition
MINNEAPOLIS – BERLIN: common ground

Sixteen students from the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota, led by Professor Jenny Schmid, and from the Department of Painting at the weissensee school of art and design berlin, led by Professors Pia Linz and Petra Trenkel, explore what a collaborative exhibition can look like when extensive transatlantic shipping is not feasible financially or in terms of time. The exhibition reconsiders ideas of proximity and distance against the background of contemporary technologies, making them the project’s central theme. Bringing together students from very different cultural and social contexts, the project focuses on exchange and dialogue across a seven-hour time difference via online networking. Supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the partnership will continue with a subsequent exhibition in Minneapolis and will be documented in an accompanying catalogue.

The exhibition opens on Thursday, 11 June 2026 at 7 pm at KUNSTPUNKT BERLIN – Space for Contemporary Art, Schlegelstraße 6, 10115 Berlin, and will be on view until 28 June 2026.

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Exhibition
Reflected – Perspectives on Contemporary Etching

The exhibition Reflected – Perspectives on Contemporary Etching displays around 50 contemporary positions in intaglio printmaking by students and lecturers from the weissensee school of art and design berlin, the Braunschweig University of Art and the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.

Since the fifteenth century, printmaking - including woodcut, engraving, and etching - has developed into an independent artistic medium, shaped by pioneers such as Gutenberg and Dürer. Today, art universities continue this rich tradition by teaching a wide range of classical and experimental intaglio techniques, photography-based processes and methods that interface with digital technologies.

The exhibition opens on 19 June 2026 at 7 pm in the Museum of the Printing Arts Leipzig, where it will remain on view until 30 August 2026. It will subsequently travel to Braunschweig, Berlin and Wolfsburg.

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Exhibition
Unforeseen Events

In 2025, eight graduates of the weissensee school of art and design berlin were awarded the Mart Stam Prize in recognition of their outstanding end-of-course projects. Under the title Unforeseen Events, they will present their work from 17–28 June 2026 at the Galerie Pankow. The exhibition opens on Tuesday, 16 June at 7 pm.

Unforeseen Events describes the experience of living through an unpredictable period of transformation in which answers can no longer be found in the values of the past. How do we preserve what cannot be spoken, what cannot be held onto? And how can the unsayable be expressed? The exhibition brings together perspectives from design and fine art and explores personal family histories, collective memories, care practices and visions of the future. Using a variety of strategies and media, the artists and designers explore these topics in the form of film, textiles, participatory formats and sensory experiences.

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Lecture Series
weißensee in situ: Archaeologies of an Art University

As part of the university’s 80th anniversary celebrations, the Department of Theory and History continues its lecture series weißensee in situ: Archaeologies of an Art University, exploring the past, present, and future of the institution from a range of perspectives.

On Thursday, 18 June, Sarah Oh-Mock will present her lecture-performance The Last Days of Weißensee, which imagines a posthuman archaeology of the weißensee school of art design berlin. Drawing on artefacts from the late Anthropocene, AI-generated drone imagery, and historical photographs, the project reconstructs a vanished world and examines its social spaces, artefacts and artistic practices. On Thursday, 25 June, Professor Martin Beck will trace the development of the preliminary course about the Bauhaus movement into the Foundation Studies in Art + Design course and will follow its evolution at the university from its founding through to the present day. Both lectures take place at 5 pm in the auditorium. Further dates and information are available online.

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Our preparations for the Open Day Tours and the exhibitions of final-year assignments are very much under way. On Saturday and Sunday, 11 and 12 July 2026 from 12 pm to 8 pm, students from all departments will be presenting their course assignments, including those for their diplomas, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees on the premises of the weissensee school of art and design berlin.

The very first presentation will be made by the Department of Fashion Design on Thursday, 2 July 2026. As part of seefashion26, the bachelor’s and master’s graduates will show their end-of-course collections on the site of the Centre for Art and Urbanistics (ZK/U). On 3 July 2026, the central, end-of-course fine arts exhibition with the title “escalators to: big bang” will open in the historic industrial building Monopol. To finance this exhibition, the artists will be auctioning some of their works in the auditorium of the weissensee school of art and design from 7 pm to 9 pm on 5 June 2026. Finally, graduates from the Department of Visual Communication are inviting the public to the opening of an exhibition of their work in the project rooms feldfünf on Thursday 9 July.