This week, Berlin Art Week over 100 venues open their doors for a vibrant city-wide celebration of contemporary art. While galleries and installations open their doors, MEAN BERLIN invites you to carry a historic piece of Berlin’s art and history: Christo’s Reichstag Wrapped through our commemorative T-shirt.
Why is Berlin Art Week Such a Big Deal?
Since 2012, Berlin Art Week has transformed the city each September into a playground for artists, curators, collectors, and curious minds. Over five days, Berlin is filled with exhibitions, performances, screenings, and workshops that break out beyond gallery walls and into public space.
The spirit of the week echoes the legacy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose iconic 1995 installation Wrapped Reichstag challenged the boundaries between art, architecture, and civic life. Today, public installations remain a key feature of Berlin Art Week, from large-scale interventions to experimental performances. If you’re in town, don’t miss this around Wedding’s Uferhallen, a great spot to catch some art outside the white cube.
Our tips for the week
Visit the Berlin Art Week Garten, the festival’s open-air meeting point. Located at Hamburger Bahnhof, you’ll find the program overview to plan your route as well as workshops, DJ sets, film screenings and program overviews.
We’d also recommend going to see the Positions Berlin Art Fair at the historic Tempelhof Airport. This event showcases contemporary art- 111 international galleries from 24 countries . It takes place in the airports’ Hangers that provide a unique atmosphere with 16-meter-high ceilings and spacious exhibition areas with fantastic natural light. This year the special focus is on galleries from Japan.
On Friday night, it’s one of our favourite parts of the week- the Featured Night. Many independent, small initiatives and special projects will open their doors for you late into the evening. They will take place in backyards, studios and unusual places, such as the Falscher Fish city laboratory.
Wrapped Reichstag: A Symbol of the New Germany
Now back to one of the art works that inspired the modern day art scene in Berlin. At MEAN BERLIN, we’re obsessed with the layers of Berlin’s history, and no artwork captures them quite like Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Wrapped Reichstag.
Let’s rewind to 1995. It is a moment in time that stands still, one those who saw will never forget and one we’re all still fascinated by now.
100,000 square meters of aluminium-coated fabric panels and a 15,600-meter-long blue polypropylene rope cover the Reichstag. Artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude had created one of the most legendary art works in Berlin’s history. Some members of parliament think the project would violate the dignity of the house. Overall, people associate the artwork with the transformation from the historic Reichstag building to the new seat of parliament of reunified Germany.
There would be five million visitors in two weeks. It gained huge worldwide attention as a defining cultural moment.
‘A symbol of the new Germany’– New York Times
‘Christo reconciles the Germans with the Reichstag’– Le Monde
Whilst the Reichstag was wrapped overnight, it was 24 years in the making. The Christos travelled to Berlin 60 times to inspect the building and hold talks with members of parliament. A close vote was held and 292 parliamentarians voted for the project, 223 against. As the wrapping itself was considered part of the artwork it was done by humans- 90 climbers and 120 assembly workers to be precise.
Who were the Christo and Jean-Claude?
Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a visionary artist duo best known for their large-scale environmental installations, beginning in the 1960s. They rose to international fame by wrapping landscapes, buildings, and urban structures in fabric, transforming everyday spaces into extraordinary works of art.
Some of their other iconic wrapping projects include:
Pont Neuf Wrapped in Paris
The Gates in New York’s Central Park
The Floating Piers on Italy’s Lake Iseo
Their installations were monumental yet temporary, designed to exist only for a short period. For them, this was the point. Art, they believed, should be a fleeting experience, powerful enough for the moment to linger in memory long after it disappears.
Carry the moment with MEAN BERLIN’s Reichstag Wrapped T-shirt
As Christo said:
“ Art is not only the fabric, it’s the people who will look at it.”
Beyond the gallery walls and curated spaces, Berlin’s art lives on the streets, in its architecture and its history. That is why at MEAN BERLIN we’re bringing one of the city’s most iconic artistic moments back to the streets in the form of our T-shirt. It’s a moment in time, a piece of Berlin’s layered past, that you can carry into the present.
We hope you enjoy Berlin Art Week. Let’s celebrate what makes Berlin so unique: its bold ideas, open expression and its moments that ripple through time!
Shop the Wrapped Reichstag T-shirt online.
Represent, carry the moment.
