The JMB opens a new exhibition: Access Kafka

“Access” as a Guiding Principle

In a broader sense, “access” means permission, freedom, or the ability to enter or leave a place. Access Denied is the opening and closing chapter of the exhibition. Hetty Berg, JMB Director, summarizes the concept of the exhibition as follows: “In his literary texts, Kafka poses universal and timeless questions about the paradoxes of human existence, about the relationship between individuals and society, and about admission and belonging. The contemporary artworks displayed reflect on these questions in a complex and ambiguous manner.” The JMB’s Access Kafka exhibition and the accompanying program invite visitors to pursue these reflections, participate in them, and carry them forward.

Germany’s Minister of State for Culture, Claudia Roth, states: “Access Kafka closes the circle of the many activities marking the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka's death. The exhibition impressively succeeds in forming new perspectives from the seemingly known and familiar, sharpening our image of Kafka. The exhibition provides new impulses and raises surprising questions, inviting visitors to explore and discover on their own, to take a creative approach, to discuss and exchange ideas. As a place of extracurricular education, the JMB makes an important contribution to exploring and forming opinions about Jewish culture in Europe in the past and present through this open-ended approach to Franz Kafka.”

Theme Rooms

Shelley Harten, the curator of the exhibition, selected six themes that were significant for Kafka. The contemporary artworks presented inspire visitors to different kinds of reflections. The Access Word room points to Kafka’s writing, as admission to his imagination, and his visual language with its frequent use of doors and windows, giving visibility to experiences of alienation and intrusion. The Access Judaism room considers how Kafka contemplated shared and individual experiences, affiliation and exclusion, in a way that is both ambiguous and universal. The Access Law theme room addresses the meaningless rules of bureaucracy, the anonymous impositions of authority, encroachment into the private sphere, and the inaccessibility of power. Access Space explores Kafka’s ability to give form to hopelessness, disorientation, and anxiety. The Access Body theme room shows how bodies in art, especially performance art – Kafka’s artists are often performing artists – become locations for relationships of power and violence.

One reason why Kafka’s oeuvre is so relevant today is that it negotiates the conditions for social participation. Whether someone belongs to a social group, a country, or a religion is neither clear nor constant. Shelley Harten concludes: “Kafka’s self-reflexive and ambivalent relation to society finds its place in art.”

The exhibition’s festive opening this evening is open to the public and free of charge. The exhibition rooms will be accessible to visitors starting at 6 pm. Hetty Berg, JMB Director, Claudia Roth, Germany’s Minister of State for Culture, and Shelley Harten, Access Kafka curator, will officially open the exhibition in the Glass Courtyard at 7 pm.

Participating artists:

Cory Arcangel, Yael Bartana, Yuval Barel, Guy Ben Ner, Marcel Broodthaers, Marcel Duchamp, Maria Eichhorn, Mary Flanagan, Ceal Floyer, Tehching Hsieh, Anne Imhof, Fatoş İrwen, Uri Katzenstein, Lina Kim, Martin Kippenberger, Maria Lassnig, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Michal Naaman, Trevor Paglen, Alona Rodeh, Roee Rosen, Gregor Schneider, Hito Steyerl

Institutions that have loaned objects from the work of Franz Kafka:

Bodleian Libraries/University of Oxford, National Library of Israel, German Literature Archive in Marbach

An exhibition catalog published by Kerber Verlag is available for purchase in the JMB Shop and bookstores in German and English editions (€38 each), with essays by Kafka scholars Carolin Duttlinger, Vivian Liska, and Reiner Stach.

Another Kafka expert, Hans-Gerd Koch, has composed a biographical walk through Berlin for the JMB exhibition Access Kafka. You can find it on the Jewish Places website: go.jewish-places.de/BioKafka/en.

For current information on the exhibition, visit: https://www.jmberlin.de/en/access-kafka.

The media partners of the exhibition are the Yorck Kinogruppe and radioeins, a station of Berlin and Brandenburg’s regional public broadcaster rbb.

The Access Kafka exhibition was completed with the support of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and the Friends of the Jewish Museum Berlin in the U.S. The Projekt Hollmannstrasse 1987/2024 installation by Maria Eichhorn and the accompanying educational events were made possible through the FRIENDS OF THE JMB. The accompanying program was supported by the Berliner Sparkasse.

Current press images for attributed use