PHOTOS: Inside Hamburger Bahnhof’s Landmark Inaugural Gala

Christine Würfel Stauss. Picture: Polina Vinogradova

Final yr, Observer spoke with Hamburger Bahnhof co-directors Sam Bardaouil and Until Fellrath concerning the museum’s evolution and their shared curatorial imaginative and prescient. “If there’s one precept, it’s this: the museum have to be stressed sufficient to stay alive to its second and dedicated sufficient to nurture lasting resonance past it,” Bardaouil stated. That restlessness was very a lot on show on the establishment’s first-ever gala, “A Night time in Berlin”—a glittering celebration of not solely the museum’s thirtieth anniversary but additionally its continuous reinvention and the folks whose assist has allowed it to flourish.

Amongst them was Cate Blanchett, whose relationship with Hamburger Bahnhof dates to 2016, when German artist Julian Rosefeldt‘s multi-channel video set up Manifesto had its European debut on the museum. Noticed within the crowd had been artists Ayoung Kim, Monica Bonvicini, Olaf Nicolai, Petrit Halilaj, Alvaro Urbano, Mark Bradford, Jeremy Shaw, Elmgreen & Dragset, Anne Imhof and Wolfgang Tillmans, together with artwork world insiders Kira Streletzki, Carla Sozzani, Tricia Tuttle, Max Hetzler, Dahoe Ku, Frances Morris and Glenn D. Lowry. Additionally current had been beloved movie and stage skills Edward Berger, Matt Dillon, Nina Hoss, Thomas Ostermeier and Wim Wenders; collectors Christine Würfel-Stauss and Monique Burger; entrepreneur Roshni Nadar Malhotra; and the impeccably dressed Yana Peel, president of Arts, Tradition & Heritage at CHANEL.

Within the museum’s cavernous 2,500-square-meter Historic Corridor, revelers took in performances and spatial installations, from an intervention by Elmgreen & Dragset that remodeled completely bemused gala-goers into unwitting performers in a multi-act opera to a site-specific neon set up by Bonvicini and a piano solo by acclaimed pianist Alice Sara Ott. When the gang quieted, Bardaouil and Fellrath launched 4 new awards to be introduced by the museum yearly: the Hamburger Bahnhof Studio Award, introduced this yr to Abdulhamid Kircher, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju and Jonas Roßmeißl; the Hamburger Bahnhof Lifetime Achievement Award, introduced to Beirut-born, London-based artist Mona Hatoum; the Hamburger Bahnhof International Arts Patronage Award, introduced to patron and collector Kiran Nadar; and the Hamburger Bahnhof Changemaker Award, introduced to London’s Delfina Basis.

Blanchett, on the dais, known as Hamburger Bahnhof and areas prefer it irreplaceable. “Tonight is, partly, a celebration of a spot the place inventive cacophony can exist… the place totally different voices, visions and energies meet,” she declared. “For that friction, that deeply human impulse, to be shared amongst strangers, areas like Hamburger Bahnhof are important. They’re electrical environments that invite us to open up collectively and, for a second, give up to the visions of others.”