BERLIN.- Hello World. Revising a Collection is a critical inquiry into the collection of the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The foundation of every museum is its collection, which itself is shaped by contingent political and cultural conditions. With this exhibition, the Nationalgalerie is exploring the possibility of how a collection predominantly committed to the art of Western Europe and North America might broaden its scope by combining non-Western artistic tendencies and a transcultural approach. What would the collection be like today had a more cosmopolitan understanding of art informed its beginnings? Against the backdrop of an increasingly globalised present and its attendant opportunities and fault lines, as well as current political crises and cultural conflicts, such a revision is especially imperative.

The collection of the Nationalgalerie serves this exhibition both as a point of departure and frame of reference. Past collection presentations especially at Neue Nationalgalerie and Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin have already focused on allowing our present-day perspectives to take a new look at the existing collection and to open new, expanded, or even alternative chapters in art history. Hello World deals with current approaches for writing a transculturally and post-colonially informed art history. The Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin today comprises five museums: Alte Nationalgalerie, Neue Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen, Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg and Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin. Founded in 1861, its extensive holdings date from the late 18th century to the present and reflect the ups and downs throughout this period. A great number of artworks in the collection were classified as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis, a verdict which inevitably led to their removal or destruction. Germany’s division after the Second World War also left its traces: while the Nationalgalerie in West Berlin shifted its attention to Western European and North American art, the Nationalgalerie in the eastern part of the city concentrated on East German art.

The exhibition Hello World aims to reflect the character of the collection, marked by these complexities and multiple ruptures. Instead of constructing a linear history of 20th and 21st century art as-it-happened, individual works and groups of works provide points of departure for a wide range of different narratives. More than 200 works from the holdings of the Nationalgalerie are supplemented with c. 150 works on loan from other collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, including the Ethnologisches Museum, Kunstbibliothek, Kupferstichkabinett, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Zentralarchiv, the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. In addition, 400 artworks, magazines and documents are presented in the exhibition from other national and international collections. All in all, the show features works by more than 250 artists.

The interplay of these works provides points of departure for 13 manylayered narratives, which range from the retracing of vestiges of history to an associative linking of thought processes and visual worlds. The exhibition focuses on moments of transcultural exchange, artistic collaboration and border-crossings that become apparent through artists such as Marta Minujin, Tomoyoshi Murayama, Wolfgang Paalen, Walter Spies, Rabindranath Tagore and Heinrich Vogeler. It offers insights into the processes of appropriation and transformation which inform ideas, attitudes and objects. It alludes to both historical museum concepts – such as a the idea of a presentation of world art, which in the early 20th century was based on the idea of presenting artefacts from all cultures and epochs together – and current, future-oriented museum and education models. It presents alternative and hybrid forms of artistic production, scrutinises the blind spots in traditional historiography as well as the consequences of colonialism and underscores the relationships which are capable of accelerating the deconstruction of the Western canon.

Hello World presents a snapshot from ongoing research into the collection and its history. It focuses on the question: How can the Nationalgalerie develop the approaches presented here in a way that does justice to global artistic exchange in both its multiplicity and specificity?

The exhibition was developed by Udo Kittelmann with Sven Beckstette, Daniela Bystron, Jenny Dirksen, Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Gabriele Knapstein, Melanie Roumiguiere and Nina Schallenberg, and guest curators Zdenka Badovinac, Eugen Blume, Clémentine Deliss, Natasha Ginwala and Azu Nwagbogu.

Hello World comprises an extensive public programme with performances, workshops, discussions, concerts, artist talks and tours. An Unfinished Glossary structures the events according to 11 concepts that offer alternative ways of accessing the exhibition. In summer 2018, Nationalgalerie and Hirmer Verlag are publishing an exhibition catalogue in English and German language versions. Comprising 432 pages, the 3,000 edition publication includes more than 650 images and 27 texts by 30 authors.