What defines the value of an object, and who decides what is worthy of being archived? With the symposium Collecting Collections, Kunstverein Tiergarten launches an ambitious, year-long collaborative project at rk-Galerie. By inviting the public to contribute their own items to a participatory „display depot,“ curators Julia Heunemann and Ulrike Riebel are transforming the traditional exhibition space into a living, evolving repository of knowledge. This report examines how personal narratives and artistic practice converge to challenge established hierarchies of preservation through December 2026.

Symposium
Collecting Collections
Wednesday and Thursday, 29–30 April 2026, 4–8 pm
With contributions from Eva Bentcheva, Gregor Kanitz, Julia Lübbecke, Roger Rohrbach, Leah Stuhltrager, Mareike Vennen, Sam Auinger and other guests. Hosted by Julia Heunemann and Ulrike Riebel.
To mark the start of the Kunstverein Tiergarten’s annual programme at rk-Galerie, the symposium Collecting Collections launches the joint process of developing a collaborative exhibition repository. The emerging collection will be displayed in a specially designed showcase.
Visitors are invited to bring an object from their own collection, present it, and lend it to the display depot as a temporary loan. Contributing to the emerging open repository of knowledge it can become part of the exhibitions throughout the entire duration of the project until December 2026.
Please register in advance – feel free to suggest an item for loan.
On-site registration: Monday and Tuesday, 27–28 April 2026, 3–6 pm at rk-Galerie
Registration by email: info@kunstverein-tiergarten.de

Exhibition
Critical Friends
Sam Auinger, Ingo Gerken, Julia Lübbecke, Katharina Reich
7 May–10 July 2026 | Opening on Wednesday, 6 May 2026, at 6 pm with itinerant interlude #72 featuring Lorena Izquierdo
The exhibition Critical Friends, organised by Kunstverein Tiergarten at rk-Galerie, presents works by Sam Auinger, Ingo Gerken, Julia Lübbecke and Katharina Reich, bringing them together in a multimedia dialogue on collecting as an artistic practice.
The invites artists address questions regarding the politics and forms of representation of collections and open up new approaches to the objects in the participatory display depot that forms the basis of the program. Through sound works, performances, and installation pieces, collecting is examined as a traditional practice and aesthetic strategy.
Sam Auinger’s site-specific sound project explores the urban surroundings of rk-Galerie as a playground for musical listening. The Rathauspark forms the centrepiece of the score. Auinger invites visitors to contribute their perceptions to an open archive. In his series of Bibliosculptures, Ingo Gerken deconstructs the representation of artworks in publications. His temporary object interventions take place directly in the books and interact with the artistic works depicted within them. In multimedia installations, Julia Lübbecke explores the
materiality and politics of collecting. With a feminist, post-materialist approach, she examines how prevailing infrastructures of order organise the documentation of knowledge and what is deemed worthy of preservation. Her artistic practice is characterised by research into ephemeral collections and archives. In unlikely object constellations, Katharina Reich explores individual attributions of value. Resorting to her own and to other people’s collections, her installations are made of everyday objects staged as carriers of intimate or unsettling, often biographical stories.
Throughout the 2026 exhibition and educational program, the exhibition depot and artistic positions will be reconfigured, expanded upon and reimagined to enter into ongoing dialogue with the audience. Thus, a collaborative, cross-media, and inclusive repository of knowledge is established, one that grows alongside the participating actors, engages various senses, and brings together diverse perspectives.
Curated by Julia Heunemann and Ulrike Riebel, Artistic Direction of Kunstverein Tiergarten.