On the occasion of its 200th exhibition, the Kleine Humboldt Galerie invites artists to engage with the art collection of Humboldt University Berlin. The collection comprehends more than one thousand objects from the past three centuries, including monuments, paintings, drawings, sculptures, textiles, graphics and medals.

IN THE OPEN promotes dialogue: Contemporary artists focus on particular objects, thereby approaching the collection from multiple perspectives. Their artistic analyses aim to uncover systematics of historiography, institutional identification and the politics of gender representation. Furthermore, the artists reflect on the collection’s political context, its temporality and presentation as well as on issues of accessibility and exclusion.

The exhibition is accompanied by a framework programme that will examine the collection’s functional relation to the university and its heterogeneous audience of staff, students and public.