Berlin Is Now the Home of The World's Largest Street Art Museum
Europe's graffiti capital gets its own five-storey urban contemporary art gallery.
Not content with decking out its outdoor spaces with murals and more, Berlin is boosting its street art game. The German city now boasts its own street art museum — and, in keeping with its status as Europe's graffiti capital, the Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art earns the honour of the world's largest street art gallery.
Opening its doors on September 16 in Schöneberg in the city's inner south, the five-storey facility features original pieces from more than 100 well-known street artists, such as Shepard Fairey, Evol, 1010, and Icy and Sot. Curated by an international team of experts, and designed to grow and evolve, the site not only displays its art works in the traditional way, but turns its Wilhelminian-era building into a canvas. That means decking out its architectural features and exterior surfaces, including its facade, which will be covered in 8,000-square-foot murals that can be transported, rotated and stored.
The nearby train tracks will also be fitted out with installations by more than 30 artists, expanding the museum's influence beyond its walls. Inside, visitors will find a bricks-and-mortar addition in the form of a catwalk stretched across the two-storeys of the building's interior — ensuring that displayed pieces can be properly seen both from a distance and close up.
Free to enter and view, in keeping with street art's usual creed, the latest project from Urban Nation continues their efforts to turn Berlin into one huge street art gallery. Well, it continues them and adds a huge street art gallery. That said, the Museum for Urban Contemporary Art mightn't keep its title for too long, with a massive, warehouse-based street art museum currently coming together in Amsterdam for a 2018 launch. Paris also has its own, featuring 150 works; however, Urban Nation director and curator Yasha Young told Conde Nast Traveler that the Berlin gallery, "will be the world's first museum that covers all genres of urban contemporary art, including graffiti, paste-ups, sculptures, acrylic designs, and other forms typically found in cityscapes."
For more information, visit the museum website.
Via Conde Nast Traveler. Image: Urban Nation.
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