Publications

The Akademie der Künste publishes its own publications in connection with exhibitions and special events, as well as new acquisitions in the archives. These include exhibition catalogues, symposia documentation, monographs on individual artists, as well as publications on thematic main focuses and on selected archival collections.

Our publications can be ordered by phone or email, and you can visit our bookstore on Hanseatenweg in Berlin, which has access to all of the Akademie der Künste’s available books and antiquarian rarities.

 

Sinn und Form

Every two months, the Akademie der Künste also issues the “Sinn und Form” (Purpose and Form) journal.

Founded in 1949 by Johannes R. Becher and Paul Wiegler, the cultural magazine Sinn und Form (Purpose and Form), published by the Akademie der Künste, is one of the most influential of its kind in Germany. Originally addressed to a literary audience in particular, the journal today is also a venue for philosophical, aesthetic, and social issues, for the meeting of art and science, poetry and anthropology, and is thus a key publication for many Academy members. The ambitious programme has an international focus and comprises selected letters and conversations, essays, poems, and narratives. Findings from the extensive Academy Archive continue to be presented.

Current Publications

113 children from the “Ehm Welk” Regional School in Ueckermünde explored their town for a week in March and recorded their discoveries in photos, pictures, films, sounds and animations, writing stories and drawing fictitious town maps. Artists supported the fifth graders. The result is an alternative city guide that goes beyond the classic book format to include acoustic and cinematic elements.


Accompanying the current exhibition, the 20th issue focuses on the context of power, space, and violence. Other topics include exile, artistic freedom, the broadcasting crisis, and the role of the arts in the revolutionary process in Iran. With contributions by and with Regina Stephan, Monica Bonvicini, Joanna Piotrowska, Eszter Salamon, Philipp Krüpe , Mina Keshavarz, Tanasgol Sabbagh, Matthias Lilienthal, Meron Mendel, Senthuran Varatharajah, Dominic Graf, Gerhart Baum, Sibylle Hoimann and Annett Gröschner, among others.

To order the printed version: info@adk.de


Planning and building under the National Socialists pervaded all areas of life between 1933 and 1945 and were inseparably linked to the regime’s totalitarian practices – both in the German Reich and in the European territories it occupied. The members of the Independent Commission of Historians – Wolfgang Benz, Tilman Harlander, Elke Pahl-Weber, Wolfram Pyta, Adelheid von Saldern, Wolfgang Schäche and Regina Stephan – were tasked by what is now the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building with the research project “Planning and Building under the National Socialists: Prerequisities, Institutions, Impacts”. The research findings are presented in their essays, each of which draws on contemporary photographs and plans with accompanying commentary to amplify seven areas of focus: Housing and Settlements; Party and State Architecture; Camps in the National Socialist Era; Infrastructure and Spatial Planning; Internationality; Continuities in Urban Planning and Architecture in the East and West after 1945; The Building Legacies of National Socialism. Included in the book are biographies of fifty architects, landscape designers, construction specialists and civil servants.


Nan Goldin has broken taboos and overcome boundaries with her works set in her personal environment and the LGBTQ* community. In doing so, she has campaigned for acceptance and increasing recognition of the LGBTQ* scene. The immediacy in her photographs stems from her physical and emotional belonging and detachment from a lifeworld that is closed to many people but has been opened up by Goldin. The catalogue marking the occasion of the artist winning the Käthe Kollwitz Prize contains colour and black-and-white images spanning five decades from Boston, New York, Paris, Berlin, and Asia, as well as a recent interview by her friend Thora Siemsen.


The new issue looks at the crisis of public broadcasting as an instrument of democracy, at how art deals with the societal challenges of artificial intelligence, and at the changing role of (art) criticism. Other focal points: the current archive exhibition “Spurensicherung,” photographs by Nan Goldin and Aleš Šteger on artistic freedom in Europe.

To order the print edition: info@adk.de