Small but worth going to even if just to pop in for hour or so to see in person esp given how…read morepertinent the motivations of her work are again in todays world The location is also nice & -the last time I was there at least- quiet & calm

Of all the museums in Berlin - and that's a whole lot of museums - my friend had this one on her…read morelist. It's a small, private museum that I'd heard nothing about. My guidebook also didn't play it up as a must-see so I went with tempered expectations and what I discovered was a perfect bookend to the experience of touring Berlin. Set in West Berlin, on a charming Paris-esque street, the intimate (though multi-story) Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum features works by this Berlin artist so closely associated with the Berlin-during-wartime experience. After you've seen all of the war-related memorials, toured the nearby concentration camp (Sachsenhausen), and drank in the whole divided city thing come here. Kathe Kollwitz was a politically radical artist in Prenzlauer Berg who tragically lost her son to war and later her grandson, to more war. In the process, she became a Pacifist, something she described as the most difficult thing one can ever do. Through her art, Kollwitz continually questioned the senselessness of mothers offering their sons to the war machine and their unspeakable grief at the consequences. She found no comfort - only tragedy - in the corruptness of the then popular message that it is honorable to sacrifice your life for your country. Frequent themes of Kollwitz' work include mothers trying to protect their children and parents grieving over the loss of their children. One of her most powerful works is a self-portrait of she and her husband crushed with grief at the loss of their son. Her work profoundly captures the trauma, senselessness, and evils of war. Come to the Kathe Kollwitz Museum, on this peaceful, graffiti-free street, for a bit of reflection on the tragedy of war. Kollwitz' iconic works might move you towards Pacifism or tears or both. Kollwitz' work is also the sole feature of Berlin's WWII Neue Wache Memorial featuring a mother cradling her dead son in her arms. If this sculpture moves you in any way, a visit to the Kathe-Kollwitz Museum should be high on your list. Kathe Kollwitz was an incredible artist with a powerful message that I can get behind: Never Again War. While in Berlin, make time for this special, powerful, under-the-radar museum.

AMAZING!!! Took 2 hours to get through the museum. Very hands on so good for families or something…read moreto do on a rainy day. If in Berlin don't leave without stopping here. Avoid Sundays if you can, it gets fairly busy and crowded.

What a beautiful museum with all kinds of displays. Most description cards are in German and…read moreEnglish. Allow at least 3-4 hours. They have a nice cafe too.

Overview: Great Egyptian exhibits, some interesting additional exhibits. If you love history or…read moremuseums, this is a must see in Berlin. Number one reason to visit the Neues Museum is the Egyptian exhibits including seeing the original Queen Nefertiti. Beyond the fantastic Egyptian exhibits, there are many additional excellent artifacts and exhibits including a German medieval gold hat (which was also a celestial calendar), a contemporaneous coin showing an image of Charlemagne, and much more. In some parts of the museum we encountered displays there were broken and displays that were simply empty. Time budget: 3-4 hours minimum Overall cleanliness: excellent Bathroom cleanliness: excellent WiFi: some areas had free WiFi, but it was spotty Unique gripe: At the Nefertiti exhibit, photographs near the exhibit were prohibited. Visitors had to stand about 20 to 25 feet away from the exhibit to take photos. Very odd. Misc: No water fountains or bottle filling stations.

Their website needs work. Maybe it is the English side that is bad, but the website makes it…read moredifficult to find the hours of this museum. The website was also very vague about the Pergamum Museum being closed for 10 years for renovations! This is located on Museum island in the heart of Berlin. We walked here on a freezing cold day. We did not have tickets before hand. We arrived to the main entrance and were told NO, we needed to buy tickets in the side entrance. So we walked to the side. We entered and we were told NO, go downstairs. So we went downstairs to the same door that is the main entrance but we had to go around? Who knows, just be prepared to be confused by the signs and the docents. There are three people at the counter. 1 is for information only. 2 is the tickets only. 3 is audio guide only. I can see in the peak of summer that reservations and pre-paid is a good idea. We waited in line for roughly 6 minutes before we purchased our tickets. They try to do the upsell, but the only museum we wanted to see the Pergamum museum is closed for 10 years for renovations! They were not happy that museum is closed as well. Coat check: There is a free coat check. The lady will give you a number and just return it to get your coat. This museum is worth the money and the visit. There is quite a lot of Egyptian art on display that it can be overwhelming. The highlight is Nefertiti bust. She is quite beautiful to look at, but the museum does not allow photos of close. You have to be in the hallway where it is very difficult to get a photo because all the tourists are stopping and staring at her. Here are 3 tips: 1. Use a camera with a telephoto lens to zoom in and capture her 2. Rest your iPhone on the sign to keep it steady to get a great photos 3. If you have a young child, have them go and stand next to her, the docents are really nice and will make the tourists stop to allow the parents to snap a photo of their child and that is your opportunity to get a good photo too. You also learn a great deal about the Copper, Bronze and other ages and history of Germany. Bathrooms: very clean and free

Went to one of my all time favorite exhibitions here. Really unique work and a beautiful…read morespace. Highly recommend!

Postfuhramt, Exhibition Centre for Photography…read more Postfuhramt building was constructed in the 18751881 by Wilhelm Tuckermann according to the plans of Carl Schwatlo. It was seriously damaged during the Second World War and partially restored in the years 1973-1989. From the year 1997 it has been used as the exhibition centre. And that's what it is now the Exhibition Centre for Photography. The gallery hosts various exhibitions that oten change. The content as well as the quality of the works exposed might be different. You might be lucky to find there great pictures of famous or unknown photograpers or you might be disappointed. The good thing is that there is enough room for several exhibitions at the same time which provides you with a good chance to see at least something that you would like. The interior of the Postfuhramt is not what you expect to see keeping in mind its pretty clean facade. The peeling walls provocatively exposing layers of the paint they where wearing for last decades, crumbling stucco, and worn-out doors create a scary and enchanting background for photograps. At the second glance the biggest exhibition room proves to be a former sport hall with one of the hoops still fixed to the wall. I guess you have to be quite a pervert to see the beauty of this collapsing block of history but I swear I loved it! Definitely worth a visit.

We visited this museum on a recent trip to Berlin. This was my son's pick. He loves dinosaurs. This…read morewas one of the best dinosaur exhibits I have ever seen. Not only do they have like the longest dinosaur fossil in the world, but they have these amazing viewfinders that you look through and the dinosaurs come to life. You can see how the dinosaur moved and how it ate. It was really cool and my son was absolutely obsessed with it. They had this very weird room with animals in jars. I've never seen anything like it and I was a little bit grossed out by it but my kid thought it was cool. They also have the biggest collection of taxidermy that I've ever seen. I very much enjoyed the Exhibit on Darwin and natural selection. It was really fun to learn about zebra stripes. The space part of the museum was cool. And throughout the museum there were numerous panels in English but unfortunately, the video in the space portion was only in German so we didn't totally understand what we were watching. It was fun watching nonetheless. I don't expect everything to be in English. Overall, a great family friendly pick. We spent about 2-2.5 hours here and they do offer family ticket prices which were very reasonable.

OK, so three stars is going to seem a bit mean, given the dinosaur section is excellent and worth…read moreseeing by itself. But the rest needs a lot of investment to bring it into the 21st Century (by which I just mean better displays rather than tons of interactive stuff - though more educational interactive exhibits would be good). Anyway, the positives: the main dinosaur hall is the star attraction. It's dominated by the world's tallest mounted dinosaur skeleton (of a brachiosaur), surrounded by a smaller sauropod, a stegosaurus and an allosaur, along with a couple of smaller dinosaurs. There at also lots of smaller fossils, illustrating the rich biodiversity of life found by the Tendaguru Hill excavation in what is now Tanzania. Between 1909 and 1913, scientists of the Museum, led by palaeontologist Werner E. M. Janensch (1878-1969), found approximately 230 tonnes of bones - the most successful single dinosaur excavation of all time. However, many will come to see the small fossil in its own room at the rear of the hall - the best preserved Archaeopteryx anywhere. Throughout this section, the presentation is good, and in English as well as German. Around the corner - with a room to itself - is "Tristan", the Tyrannosaurus Rex, one of the best preserved tyrannosaur fossils - and impressively massive. After such a stunning start, the remainder of the Museum is a little disappointing. The huge mineral collection is presented in traditional Victorian-style glass cases, with virtually no interpretation, even in German. This is a huge pity as the collection itself is wonderful, but it's no good if you don't know what you're looking at. The evolution section (lots of stuffed animals) is a little better, but again rather old fashioned. The birds section is smaller but more modern and altogether nicer. The weirdest room is that with thousands of specimen jars - you simply walk around it, staring at the lifeless (and unlabelled) bodies of small animals floating in formaldehyde. It's all a bit macabre without being informative. Here and there you can see some of the scientific work going on, which is nice, and they do make an effort with talks and lectures. But there's no escaping the need for investment. The museum is easy to get to, with its own underground station and tram stop 250m away. There's a decent souvenir shop and rather small concession café - very busy when we went (and they'd run our of sandwiches by 2pm).

Very interesting museum, but its inside a small location. They did a good job packing it with…read moreinformation, but many of the exhibits require you to open doors or slides to get the descriptions. If its packed full of people, then it gets super awkward trying to look over people's shoulders, etc. But, the history is super fascinating, and the displays are a look into the life of a GDR citizen, which has disappeared once the wall came down. Cool stuff, but go on a less busy day to get the full vibe out of the place.

Open 9am to 9pm daily, 365 days a year, this museum is small but a fun, interactive and educational…read moreexperience featuring the history, culture, and daily lives of people during the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) (or in English--German Democratic Republic, GDR). I arrived on a Sunday evening around 7:30pm, and stayed almost until they closed at 9pm. That proved a good time to go since there were only about a dozen other visitors in the museum in that duration. Tickets are €13.50 for full price, €8.00 for discounted tickets for students, disabled, military in service or veterans, and recipients of certain unemployment benefits + 7% VAT. Kids under 6 are free. Tickets are available online or in person; when I was there, there wasn't a line. Inside the museum isn't large, kinda like the size of a large retail store. They really pack it in with tons of information about the life and times of people living during the East German socialist era. From providing background on the political shift post WWII, there's information on how social and economic policies affected everyday transactions--commuting to work, grocery store purchases, print/audio/film media, school courses and extracurriculars, vocations, community events and organizations, military service and leisure activities. They do this with a gamut of interactive displays--there are countless cupboards and drawers that can be opened to display descriptions and memorabilia from that era, or other hands-on elements. Anything from replicated excerpts of magazines and newspapers, recreated canned food labels, audio recordings of propaganda, history on the government officials, to the toys children used to play with, recipes for commonly eaten food, etc... The recreation of a DDR apartment with different rooms--foyer, living room, dining and kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, plus a couple full sized cars that you can sit in--really helps to rewind the clock for visitors to comprehend how life was like. Would definitely recommend a visit! I left feeling very creatively educated on DDR times. Gift shop and bathrooms are available. Parking is available via nearby structure, also reachable by public transit S/U-bahn, bus or tram.

The signs on the street list these two things separately:…read more * The Museum of Photography and * The Helmut Newton Museum Follow the signs however, and you'll wind up in the exact same place. They are one and the same and, between the two, The Helmut Newton Museum is the better descriptor. Helmut Newton (RIP) was born in Berlin and left the country at age 18. When he died, a portion of his estate was given over to the creation of this museum. By his own description, Helmut Newton was a hired gun photographer. He was not an art photographer though his fashion and celebrity portraits were most certainly artistic. He was most known for highly sexualized portraits of amazonian models and celebrities in various states of undress and often with a bondage-theme. His portraits are immediately recognizable; what he did he did incredibly well. This museum trades almost exclusively in everything Helmut with seemingly little too silly to display. A replica of his office was probably cutting edge at one time but now it looks dusty and dated. Mannequins, wearing the clothes he wore at various events and shoots, are silly. All of his cameras? Yawn. And the work for which he is not known (collages, landscapes) ought not even be on display; it's not representative of his best work nor is it notable. The Helmut Newton Museum misses an opportunity to become an actual photography museum by focusing so exclusively on the work of Helmut Newton. Though there are things here worth seeing I had the impression that, were I to return, I'd be seeing mostly the same things. For this reason, it seems worth seeing once, either to familiarize one's self with the work of Helmut Newton or to enjoy it again and see some additional things worthy of your time. * For those not familiar with Helmut Newton, focus on the photos of fashion models and celebrities, most taken for publications like Vogue and Vanity Fair. This was his bread and butter and the work for which he became famous. * Also worth seeing: a) a jumpy film featuring Mr. Newton discussing how he likes his fashion models to pose (arms away from the body) and b) the large crop of condolence letters sent from the fashion elite to Helmut's widow upon his death * Lots of provocative photos of fully naked or partially naked women. The Helmut Newton Museum is not a place for prudes.

Wer sich für Fotografie interessiert ist hier genau richtig. Neben anderen sehenswerten…read moreAusstellungen kann man hie auch das Schaffen von Helmut Newton betrachten. Macht mit Fotofreunden doppelt Spaß anzuschauen und darüber zu sprechen! http://www.helmutnewton.com/

Urban Nation is an amazing place for art lover…read more I"ve been here couple times and never got bored or disappointed. The gallery offer many amazing works from different artists. I love most the style they presented and great to get some new inspiration. It is free to visit and they usually change each exhibition between 1-3 months period of time. So visitors can have more time for the exhibition they interested at. They also paint the wall of the building outside time to time, very cool and camera ready.

Great museum that has an amazing art- graffiti/street art style…read moreInteresting stories behind pieces You can make some pretty cool photos there And the best part that it's free!

I always have the need to visit the modern art museums when I'm traveling. I'm curious to see what…read moreis being shown around the world. I decided to visit this one even though it involved an exhibit by Yoko Ono. The building looks like a simple, square building from the exterior. You go downstairs to purchase tickets. It cost $20 Euro. I had to drink all my water. No water bottles allowed around the art exhibits. I checked out the Yoko Ono "experience" first. You know, observer as artist. The audience partakes in taping pieces of broken white ceramic pieces and placing them on a white shelf to be observed. I did not participate. There are exhibits on the first floor and basement levels. More artwork than what I expected. They have a great collection of old and modern art. Many statues outside to observe. They set aside one door to enter and exit. I finished my visit with the interactive installation on the first floor. It had instructions posted before you could enter. The instructions were to take off your shoes and walk through slowly. It was one of those feelings where you actually do become a little disorientated and claustrophobic. My favorite piece.

The is one of the truly great art museums. I mean, it is really-really good…read more Like many museums the exhibits here are in a constant state of flux. Thus, there are always new art-viewing experiences to be had. The art in this museum is housed in a very beautiful, architecturally well-designed, structure. It is quite nice to simply stand outside and view. Plus, there is a lot of outdoor space around this museum. So, you can sit back and take in the day either before you go inside or afterwords. In terms of the interior gallery space, this museum is broken up into numerous rooms. The art is nicely separated by artist or by school of art. It is really a nice experience walking from room to room, taking in the various forms of art and artist that is offered. There is also a very nice curated outdoor art space associated with this museum. There you will see nice sculptures and the like. Overall, this is one of my favorite Art Spots in Berlin. Great Museum showing Great Works of Art!

We thoroughly enjoyed this trip. It offered a lot of information about Anne, her family, and other…read morepeople they knew. We loved that it was interactive. You could select photo panels that you felt were most important to display for visitors who come after you. We also loved the writing/drawing interactive prompts, prompting visitors to write letters to the future, make memorials, and report antisemitism. The audio provided in your native language in videos was very much appreciated, and it was helpful to use as you walked through. Multiple people could listen at once, or you could listen alone without bothering anyone else with the audio tool provided. I highly recommend visiting this museum for reflection on the stolen life of this child, Anne Frank, and to reflect on what is happening in our own countries and lives now.

Nice little museum hidden in an eclectic alleyway up on the third floor. The alleyway walls are…read morecovered with murals, with a lovely mural of Anne Frank in front of the museum entrance. Provides a timeline of Anne's life on one side with a timeline of happenings in Germany on the opposite wall. At the time of our visit, they had facsimiles of the diary and her baby book on loan from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. There are additional interactive displays, and a movie, if you have the extra time to spend. Admission is 5 Euros for adults. Note they do have a student rate, although the rate wasn't posted.