26 January 2008

22nd Long Night of Museums in Berlin




22nd Long Night of Museums in Berlin
On January 26, around 60 museums and exhibition halls will open their doors from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. in Berlin to offer visitors a chance to browse the cultural offerings in the capital with just one ticket and a shuttle bus service to get them from A. to B.

The 22nd Long Night of Museums centers around the topic of “time”, reaching from all kinds of time measurements to the computation of time – from chronos-time flowing along- to kairos -the (right) moment of time. The versatile meanings of the term will be presented by the museums of Berlin in the traditionally high quality and with additional programs.Five routes connect the museums in different parts of the city. The logistical center of the “long night” is the Berlin Kulturforum, near the Potsdamer Platz, where you can buy tickets for the event and find out more about the program. Tickets will be on sale in advance for 12 euros, 8 euros with a discount. On the night tickets cost 15 and 10 euros respectively. For a list of all the sales points see: http://www.kulturforum-berlin.com/ Berlin was the first city to organize a Long Night of Museums in 1997. Following its success, there are now many cities that have similar offerings. For a list of the long museum nights see: http://www.museumsnacht.de/


With the Things, it isn't easy to get out for long, so the German and I considered ourselves lucky to have a babysitter from 18-23 to be able to get out for a bit. Although that seems like a lot of time, we were able to manage only a single museum (and dinner and a visit to the museum shop and a bookstore on the way home). We decided to go to the Jewish Museum, where we have been meaning to go for ages. It was very interesting and not at all what I expected. I had thought that there would be more of an emphasis on the Shoah, but instead it really was a Jewish Museum that seemed to instead be explaining what a Jew was, that we are indeed humans like any other and to put the Jews in a temporal space and location with some explanation of the rise and fall of anti-Semitism in Europe (and of course, current existence, although that was only lightly touched upon). I now understand why there continue to be drives for Holocaust memorials: in my opinion, Berlin really has not come to grips with its complicity in genocide. In many ways, it seems that Germans have never met a Jew and the Jewish museum is rather like a cultural exhibit defining a species. It was interesting and I may expand upon this later after I have thought more on it.

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