Exhibition Archive

The Tube

An Architecture for Conceivable Times

15 Sep – 5 Nov 2023
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Ausstellungsansicht Story of My Life, Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge

The Story of My Life

Object Biography as Concept, Method and Genre

19 Jan – 4 Sep 2023
Can things recount their own biographies? The exhibition looks at the concept of the object biography, reconstructing its origins, and asks what the life of a thing might be and how we might conceive our perceptions of things – their biographies.
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Organizing Things

19 May 2022 – 2 Jan 2023
Order is a fundamental aspect of every museum: the ordering of things, the ordering of knowledge about humanity and the world. Our next exhibition takes a closer look at precisely these systems. Taking a closer look at these ordering devices can help us detect unconscious assumptions and blind spots, especially in museum work.
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Shaping Everyday Life!

Bauhaus Modernism in the GDR

23 Sep 2021 – 4 Mar 2022
A special exhibition of the Museum Utopie und Alltag, Eisenhüttenstadt in cooperation with the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge
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the early years

mart stam, the institute and the collection of industrial design

25 Mar – 30 Aug 2021
The exhibition puts a spotlight on the dawn of industrial design in the GDR and in particular on the work of the Dutch architect and Bauhaus member Mart Stam for a consistent modernisation of the product world and the institutional promotion of a new industrial culture.
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The Braun Idea

On the Corporate Identity of the Braun Company 1954 to 1972

25 Mar – 31 Dec 2021
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Braun company, the exhibition outlines the most important aspects and strategies of the Braun idea, the first comprehensive corporate identity (CI) of a German company
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Democracy and Its Eagles

National Branding in the Weimar Republic

18 Jun – 20 Oct 2020
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111/99

Questioning the Modernist Design Vocabulary Commercial Design instead of Applied Art?

29 Nov 2018 – 11 Mar 2019
First Part of the Exhibition Series "111/99. Questioning the Modernist Design Vocabulary"
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The Eroticism of Things

Collections on the History of Sexuality

3 May – 1 Oct 2018
Even before Freud, people were attributing erotic qualities to things. The exhibition traces the material and immaterial production of eroticism. Shape and color, purpose and use, implicit allusions and explicit renderings all make things the stuff of erotic fantasies, while also making them eloquent documents for a cultural history of sexuality.
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FOTO | ALBUM

Private and Anonymous Photography from the Collection of Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge

20 Oct 2017 – 9 Apr 2018
Extended until April 9! Private and Anonymous Photography from the Collection of Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge.
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Cabinet of the Unknown

28 Jul – 2 Oct 2017
Cabinet of the Unknown is a project that pursues the goal to connect the known to the unknown. Taking its title as a cue from Cabinet d’Ignorance of Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon in Dresden, Cabinet of the Unknown invites its collaborators from Oranienstr. to work on objects that cannot be taxonomified and defined at Museum der Dinge. The objects and the discussions discovered and remained undiscovered will compose the exhibition that will take place in July–September 2017.
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gern modern?

Living Concepts for Berlin after 1945

10 Feb – 26 Jun 2017
Berlin after 1945: "How will we live?" was the question of the hour. The exhibition project 'gern modern?' explores ideas for actual and idealized concepts of home that were developed by German Werkbund members in the war-ravaged city and asks about the issue's timeliness and significance for the present.
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Object Lessons

The Story of Material Education in 8 Chapters

16 Sep 2016 – 16 Jan 2017
Today, knowledge about materials, their origins and processing is valued and desired more than ever before. At the same time, such knowledge is specialized, concealed and the domain of experts. How can it become available to everyone?
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Invitation for the exhibitions "Masse und Klasse"

Masse und Klasse

Graphic Design in the GDR

17 Mar – 29 Aug 2016
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Young Collectors

A Student Exhibition

16 Jul – 31 Aug 2015
What do children and teenagers collect? How do you make a personal curio cabinet into a publicly perceived collection?
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EPHEMERA

Advertising Graphics from the Collection of Documents of Everyday Culture

11 Apr – 5 Jul 2015
Globes, fire extinguishers, drills, cooker hoods, fur coats, roast chickens, rugs, television sets, circles, stripes, lines and colours: The Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge presents a cosmos of pictures of day-to-day life with over 450 graphic advertisements from its collection of documents of everyday culture.
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CUCULA

Refugees Company for Crafts and Design

20 Mar – 6 Apr 2015
Five young men – refugees from West African countries – produce high quality design objects in a Kreuzberg design manufacture: they are committed to build a basis for their future.
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Made in Germany Politics through Things.

The German Werkbund in 1914

25 Sep 2014 – 16 Mar 2015
On the eve of the First World War, the industrial design association Deutscher Werkbund, founded by artists and industrialists in 1907, launched a mobilization of things: the functional, standardized and materially sensible design of everyday products would make the label "Made in Germany", required by British import law, rise above its original status as a mark of ostensibly poor quality. On the contrary, "Made in Germany" would be transformed into a seal of quality, raising the export power of the German Empire.
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STANDBY

On Living with Machines

23 May – 9 Jun 2014
A machine could be more than just a technical box, as shown now in the exhibition called “Standby” in the Museum of Things in Kreuzberg. The Institut for Formforschung, a cooperation of the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences / Department of Design and the Museum of Things, takes a closer look at machines in our daily lives.
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Transformations

Concepts of Re-using Things

27 Mar – 19 May 2014
Recycling, re-use, longer use, material recovery, conversion to new purposes: the use of household and industrial waste in product design often creates not only new resources in the economic sense, but also new values in the ideal and personal sphere.
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Ince belli / Slim Waist

21 Mar – 19 May 2014
Author’s cabinet Koray Ozgen (with Fuat Ozgen’s tea glass collection) Fuat Ozgen collects objects and ephemera. A conversation with his designer brother Koray Ozgen initiated his passion for slim waisted (ince belli) tea glasses. In the following years this led to a considerable collection of these vessels mostly used in Anatolia since early 20th Century.
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On Time

Timethings from the collections of the Werkbund Archiv – Museum der Dinge

30 Jun – 5 Aug 2013
Whether we are spending it, saving it or wasting it, time seems to take on a thing-like character in many of our mental and verbal constructs about it. Such expressions reveal not only a widespread understanding of time as material, but an implicit commodification of the spaces between lived events.
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3x Collection

Design-Historical, Culturally Significant, Aesthetic

12 Apr – 3 Jun 2013
Since 2007 the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge’s “open depot” standing exhibition has been pushing new levels of debate on the topic of collection in the public sphere. In the new exhibition series, “Collections Show…” we turn our attention to privately curated collections, comparing and contrasting their particular focuses and methods of organization.
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The Interior of Devices

17 Nov 2012 – 4 Mar 2013
Matias Bechtold places a focus in his artistic works on the special traits of technical casings by reinterpreting the interior of a device as living space. Where a normal user may view the interior of a device as determined by the function of the device itself, Matias Bechtold presents the extracted section as a different world.
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Museumsbauhütte II

Artistic museums and museum designs

11 Nov – 30 Jan 2012
"Museumsbauhütte" is a pragmatic and epistemological workshop, where scientific, artistic and technological knowledge is being integrated.
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ISTANBUL ALPHABET

from çokçok to zikzak

17 Feb – 9 Apr 2012
çokçok is a Turkish expression that means "an insatiable hunger for more". The exhibition ISTANBUL ALPHABET – from çokçok to zikzak partakes of the special quality of the Museum der Dinge: the exploration of the culture of everyday objects.
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WOW

about the blinding by things

1 Jun – 1 Jun 2011
In the guest project WOW students of design at the Fachhochschule Potsdam present the results of their detailed research about the subject of "blinding". They try to visualise the different "blinding qualities" and show various aspects of product culture: things that were primarily created to impress others, to show off or to deceive.
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brilliant grey

herbert hirche's centenary

21 Apr – 25 Oct 2010
The Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge exhibits the estate of the Bauhaus disciple and Werkbund adherent Herbert Hirche. The exhibition focuses on the specific situation of post-war Germany, in which an ethics of things was proposed as a contribution to material and intellectual reconstruction.
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Evil Things

An Encyclopedia of Bad Taste

16 Jul 2009 – 11 Jan 2010
The exhibition "Evil things – an encyclopedia of bad taste" uses a one hundred year-old system to categorise violations of taste, where things are not just submitted to a judgement of taste, but also to ethical valuation of their production, construction and appearance.
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Museumsbauhütte

Twelve artistic Museums and Museum Projects

22 Nov – 23 Mar 2008
This exhibition is dedicated to artistic museum projects, which reflect the museum in a critical, ironic, pensive or joyful way.
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Detour

The Moleskine Notebook Experience

30 Oct – 16 Nov 2008
Detour is a travelling group show featuring the Moleskine notebooks designed by internationally recognized artists, architects, film directors, graphic designers, illustrators and writers.
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Movables

1000 pieces of furniture on 80 squaremeters

4 Jun – 10 Nov 2008
Apart from the permanent collection the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge shows a new installation focusing on furniture as a museum object beyond the usual attribution to a designer or a stylistic context. This new presentation questions the relationship between movables and space.
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Battle of Things

An exhibition in the 100th year of the German Werkbund

29 Jun – 31 May 2007
The Werkbund Archive – Museum of Things takes the occasion of the 100-year anniversary of the German Werkbund (German Work Federation) to throw a critical eye on the history of the development and reception of this reform movement, and to review the objectives of the Werkbund with regard to their future usefulness in the light of current product culture.
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