The Federal President is moving out, art is moving in: a pop-up exhibition opens at Bellevue Palace this week

The Federal President is moving. He made his emptied official residence available to art for two weeks. Over the next eight years, Bellevue Palace and the adjacent presidential office building will be renovated. Steinmeier admitted at the press conference on Monday afternoon that he hates moving. World-famous Berlin artists such as Karin Sander, Wolfgang Tillmans and Katharina Grosse hijacked the representation and protocol rooms on the first and second floors, including the entrance hall and various salons. You will never experience Bellevue like this again.

The interest is correspondingly great. 500,000 people wanted to reserve tickets online within the first hour, but the server collapsed. Around 60 journalists and reporters came to the press conference. The Federal President says he felt “melancholy” when he took down the two paintings by Gotthard Graubner that otherwise hang in the hall. Many important decisions were made beforehand. Now a giant collage by the artist Monica Bonvicini hangs in this spot, a flesh-colored swarm with a 3-D effect made up of nothing but women’s bodies.

Portrait of the Federal President on the wall

Art and culture are under pressure, as everyone who speaks here on this day emphasizes. The curator of the exhibition and vice president of the Berlin Academy of Arts, Anh-Linh Ngo, finds clear words: Art enables aesthetic experience and can help to regain the power of judgment – beyond the perception of simple slogans. The main exhibit is Bellevue as a place of representation.

As you enter the entrance hall you hear a constantly repeating “Hello. Haaaallo.” Whoever is calling will only disappear when you see the associated video later. The artist Jochen Gerz had already done the performance in 1972, in which he shouted “Hello” into the void until he was exhausted. Without knowing how it worked back then – now it hits right to the core. Social media is constantly about attention. The frustration of our time also comes from the fact that everyone has the opportunity to express themselves. Nevertheless, the response is low. This leads to social exhaustion.

It’s interesting what is suddenly possible in the Federal President’s venerable official residence. In the entrance area hangs a comic portrait of a female federal president – painted by the artist El Bocho – who will hopefully soon join the ranks of all-male predecessors. The painter Christopher Lehmpfuhl sat in Steinmeier’s office with his smelly oil paints. According to Lehmpfuhl, no one has ever painted his office.

The artist Karin Sander hijacked the Langhanssaal. The Federal Presidents traditionally give their speeches in the Langhanssaal. In the event of a crisis, the room with the blue curtains must therefore remain furnished until the end. Sander did not want to accept that he should therefore not be available for the exhibition. She persuaded the Federal President to be her model. This is how a 3-D scan was created on a scale of 1 to 5. The mini-Steinmeier now holds the position in Bellevue until the final move out and makes us think about the separation between office and person, which no longer exists in digital times.

Organized in no time

The Federal President’s Office commissioned the Academy of Arts to organize the pop-up exhibition. But the first idea came from the people. Apparently the journalist Matthias Deiß had the initial thoughts on artistic use. He spoke to the painter Christopher Lehmpfuhl and the street artists Christian Awe and El Bocho. They in turn brought the idea to the Office of the Federal President.

Lehmpfuhl gained his first sponsors through his network, as he explains. The project was then handed over to the Academy of Arts, which in turn activated its network of artists. If there was one thing that was in short supply on this project, it was time and money. The budget and sponsors were fought until the very end.

“Normally we need a year and a half to prepare an exhibition of this size. Here we only had eight weeks for the entire production,” Ngo told Tagesspiegel. We have learned that we can act at short notice and spontaneously. Institutions should sometimes question their security thinking; not everything has to be perfect, says Ngo. “But we insist: If art is to have meaning in society, it must be adequately financed. You can’t say: See how you get along.”

There is no overarching theme for the exhibition. Most artists deal with German history in one way or another: the Nazi era, reunification, the question of representation. The artist Gregor Schneider has often dealt with symbolically laden houses in his art. One would be curious to see what he would have thought of at Bellevue if he had had time to do new work. Only the older video “Goebbels Birthplace” can be seen.

In 2014, Schneider bought the birthplace of Hitler’s propaganda minister in Rheydt near Mönchengladbach. Before he had it torn down, he filmed himself there in the kitchen or bathroom. These scenes can be seen on several screens in a salon with a chandelier. Includes a USB stick with which you could theoretically put the house back together.

The great interest even before the opening shows that art can reach a large, mixed audience. There just have to be a few things: an interesting space, exciting art and, above all, a topic that concerns everyone – just as the Office of the Federal President concerns everyone.