AICA Award: Georg Kolbe Museum named Museum of the Year 2025 // Please note: 1. No parking is now in effect on Sensburger Allee due to measures taken by the network company. Please plan for limited parking options when visiting. – 2. Changed opening hours due to construction work on the new museum building: The exhibition will end on 8 March.
To mark the end of the current exhibition, the Georg Kolbe Museum invites visitors to take part in a dialogue-based tour. Together with Peer-Olaf Richter, administrator of the Herbert List estate, author and historian Ben Miller, and the Georg Kolbe Museum’s outreach curator, key themes and interconnections in the exhibition will be explored in conversation.
The Georg Kolbe Museum cordially invites you to the opening of the exhibition Creating Space: The Constructivist Marlow Moss. With Leonor Antunes, Tacita Dean, Florette Dijkstra and Ro Robertson.
You can find more events here
On Saturday, 1 February 2026, the German section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) presented the awards “Special Exhibition of the Year,” “Exhibition of the Year,” and “Museum of the Year” at its annual general meeting at the Hamburger Kunsthalle.
This year’s Museum of the Year 2025 award was bestowed on the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin.
The event on 5 July explored the history of the Dancers‘ Fountain in a discussion with Lichtenberg Professor of Provenance Studies Prof. Dr Lynn Rother (Leuphana University of Lüneburg), curator Dr Elisa Tamaschke and director Dr Kathleen Reinhardt. You can find the recording of the event on Youtube.
On 10 July 2020, the Board of Trustees of the Georg Kolbe Foundation, which is governed by private law, held an extraordinary meeting to discuss the recent debates on the Dancer’s Fountain and the associated accusations against the museum and its director.
The Georg Kolbe Museum is clearly committed to the Washington Principles in its actions.
Due to its provenance, the ‘Dancer’s Fountain’, created by Georg Kolbe in 1922 for the married couple Heinrich and Jenny Stahl, is Nazi-looted art, which has never been questioned.
It is thanks to the museum director, Dr Kathleen Reinhardt, and her outstanding scientific expertise that the history of the fountain has been re-explored and made accessible to the public.
The Board of Trustees continues to support the museum director, Dr Kathleen Reinhardt, in her efforts to bring about a fair and just negotiated solution with the heirs in this restitution case.
The Board of Trustees of the Georg Kolbe Foundation
The Dancers‘ Fountain in the sculpture garden of the Georg Kolbe Museum is at the center of an ongoing provenance procedure and an accompanying research project. The museum assumes that it is a cultural asset that was confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution. It is committed to the Washington Principles and is seeking a fair and equitable solution with the descendants of the original owner, Heinrich Stahl.
Heinrich Stahl, a Jewish entrepreneur who commissioned the fountain, was murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942. The fountain was long considered lost and was reconstructed in the 1970s. The base of the sculpture shows Black figures supporting a white dancer – a colonially coded motif with an anti-Semitic object history. Since the 1980s, the Georg Kolbe Museum has been in contact with the descendants, who waived their claims in 2001, so the status at that time, but wanted a commemoration.
The Georg Kolbe Museum has completely modernized its lighting system: an energy-efficient lighting concept, a solar power system, and sustainable outdoor lighting showcase the artworks and architecture to their best advantage—while significantly reducing the museum’s ecological footprint.
