Hamburger Bahnhof
Museum für Gegenwart: Portrait of a museum of its time

Abstract:
Since 1996, the 'Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart' has represented a new type of museum in Berlin. The special feature of this museum is that the Hamburger Bahnhof brings together three distinct and usually separate types of display venue: it is a museum for collections, a collectors’ museum, and an exhibition gallery. The exhibits are made up of works drawn from the collections of the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Kupferstichkabinett, the Kunstgewerbemuseum and Kunstbibliothek, and the Marx Collection. An integral part of the Museum’s concept is the 'Aktionsraum', a space that is available for film, music and talks. The exhibitions are supplemented with lectures by artists, scientists and philosophers, concerts, balls, theatre performances and film showings. These events cater to the need not only to address broader concepts of works in contemporary art, but also to incorporate a range of interdisciplinary experimental areas into the Museum’s functions. It is precisely this incorporation of disparate domains that also creates the problem of the Museum – a problem that consists in the fact that the interests of public museum, and therefore public service, and private collection, collide.