Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art

The KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Kunst-Werke) is a contemporary art institution located at Auguststrasse 69 in the Mitte district of Berlin. The director is Gabriele Horn. Since July 1, 2016, the director has been Krist Gruijthuijsen.

Unlike many international contemporary art institutions, KW does not have a permanent collection but understands itself "as a place for the production and presentation of contemporary art". Its philosophy is that without a permanent collection, it can be more readily responsive to artistic innovation and to creative programming. It is a center for the introduction of recent developments in national and international contemporary culture, and for further development, working together with artists and institutions, and commissioning new work.

KW was founded in the early 1990s by Klaus Biesenbach and a group of young art enthusiasts in a former margarine factory in Berlin-Mitte. The building complex in Berlin's center has five floors and a large courtyard for outdoor projects. It includes exhibition halls, function rooms, offices, and a café, alongside apartments and studios, and provides a space for encounters and exchanges. After renovations in fall 1999, it re-opened with enhanced galleries. The American artist Dan Graham designed its glass café, Cafe Bravo, for the 1st Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art.

KW works with other avant garde venues, such as MoMA PS1 in New York City, the Venice Biennale, and Documenta X. The curator of KW also serves as a curatorial advisor to MoMA PS1.

Notable artists and groups who have showed at KW include: Ryan Trecartin, Kader Attia,Wolfgang Breuer, the musician Maya Kishi-AndersonAnnette Kelm, MISS READ International publishers and artist/writers, and Ceal Floyer. The American avant-garde artist Barbara Rosenthal performed “Existential Interaction” in its doorway as guerilla theater during the New Berlin Festival in June 2008. In 2008, the KW mounted Richard Serra. Thinking on Your Feet for the first time, the first show to only focus on the artist’s filmic work.

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