Image: Brücke Museum, Berlin
Berlin’s Brücke Museum is presenting ‘Draußen… Im Museum’, an exhibition examining the motif of nature in the art of the Brücke group, through 25 October 2026. The exhibition opened on 5 July and is accompanied by a programme of tours, workshops, discussions and readings that connect the museum’s collection with its woodland setting and contemporary perspectives on the natural world.
Founded in 1967, the Brücke Museum describes itself as the world’s only specialist museum dedicated to the artists’ group Brücke, which was established in Dresden in 1905. Its collection includes paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints by members including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel. The museum’s changing exhibitions investigate the group’s lives and work from different perspectives, while also presenting artists and movements connected to the historical and artistic context of early 20th-century Expressionism.
The September programme begins with a series of public tours. ‘Zwischen Innen und Außen’ (‘Between Inside and Outside’) is scheduled for 6 September, followed by a curatorial tour with Luna Weis and Ximena G. Toro on 10 September and an exhibition tour in German Sign Language on 11 September. On 13 September, artist and art educator Thesea Rigou Efstathopoulos will lead tours in German and English under the title ‘Welche Natur?’ and ‘Which Nature?’ The tours are included with museum admission and do not require advance registration.
Workshops expand the exhibition’s engagement beyond conventional gallery viewing. On 12 September, Curando will lead ‘Pflanzen als Gefährten’ (‘Plants as Companions’), a session focused on caring for houseplants, working with soil and producing organic plant fertiliser. ‘Somatische Übungen in den Ausstellungen’ (‘Somatic Exercises in the Exhibitions’), on 17 September, will use movement and physical responses to explore works in the galleries and the outdoor route associated with the museum’s parallel project ‘Draußen… Unter Kiefern’. The workshop is led by Thesea Rigou Efstathopoulos with TanzTangenten and is open to participants with all physical abilities, although parts of the woodland path are not barrier-free.
The programme also addresses the cultural construction of nature around the museum. On 20 September, the discussion and walking tour ‘Im Dialog – Inszenierte Natur’ (‘In Dialogue – Staged Nature’) will take place in Zehlendorf rather than at the Brücke Museum. Led by architect and curator Anna Yeboah and architectural historian Philipp Krüppe, with moderation by artist and educator Karen Michelsen Castañón, the event considers how the garden suburb’s idea of nature developed from the mid-19th century and how it has been connected to bourgeois exclusivity and exclusion.
Further September events include a reading by Lea Maria Spahn on 24 September, presenting her publication ‘Walking as Embodied Worldmaking – Bodies, Borders, Knowledgescapes’, and an artist talk with Lizza May David on 26 September. David created a new work in dialogue with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s ‘Violette Bäume’ (‘Purple Trees’), and the conversation will address the painting’s production as well as questions of memory, visibility and colonial traces in museum collections. On 27 September, Club Real will stage the first public meeting of the ‘Betriebsrat der Lebewesen’ (‘Works Council of Living Beings’), drawing on comments visitors have collected on behalf of plants, fungi, animals and microorganisms from the museum’s woodland site.
The accompanying programme continues into October with readings, printmaking workshops, family activities and further tours before ‘Draußen… Im Museum’ closes on 25 October 2026. The Brücke Museum is located at Bussardsteig 9 in Berlin.
