URBAN NATION

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URBAN NATION

URBAN NATION MUSEUM FOR URBAN CONTEMPORARY ART URBAN NATION is the world’s first noncommercial museum-quality institution focusing on urban art. Come visit us!
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URBAN NATION MUSEUM FOR URBAN CONTEMPORARY ART is an international institution for art, creative projects and social exchange. In September 2017, the URBAN NATION museum opened at Bülowstrasse 7 – in central Berlin between the rainbow district on Nollendorfplatz and the new art district around Potsdamer Strasse. The museum presents a unique overall picture of current urban contemporary art from ci

ties around the world thanks to high-calibre, permanent art exhibitions the likes of which have not been seen before. URBAN NATION is the only player in the art world with the objective of giving a home to fleeting and ephemeral street art – urban art – and of documenting the history of this fully fledged artistic movement. In Berlin, urban art is especially significant: it has characterised the city over the last few decades, conveying an international image as an artistic metropolis. That the first urban art museum appeared here of all places is no coincidence. But the museum’s appeal shines out far beyond Berlin. Because urban art is current and global – a democratic, low-threshold art form, interactive and accessible to all, moving all generations and nations, and provoking social dialogue. URBAN NATION is an initiative by Berliner Leben, a foundation of Gewobag. For more information check out our website www.urban-nation.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram ().

27/08/2026

TAPE FOR DEMOCRACY 🎨

How do you imagine a diverse and democratic society?

To kick off the Month of Democracy, URBAN NATION Museum invites you to turn your ideas, wishes, and visions for democracy into art.

On September 6, Berlin-based artist duo ENNICOLOR will lead an open Tape Art workshop at the museum. Using colorful tape and white wooden boards, you can create your own artwork and explore how simple shapes, lines, and colors can turn an idea into a powerful image.

Enni and Kerim will share their creative approach and introduce you to the basics of their technique. No previous experience is needed: whether you come on your own, with friends or family, everyone is welcome to join, experiment, and create.

The workshop is open throughout the afternoon, so you can drop in and out at any time. Short introductions will take place every 30 minutes.

📅 6 September 2026
🕑 2–4 PM
📍 URBAN NATION Museum, Bülowstraße 7, Berlin
🎟️ Free admission, no registration required

Come by, grab some tape and make your vision of democracy visible.

📸 Photo: Diana Pǎun

20/08/2026

🌓 A NIGHT AT URBAN NATION

What is legal? What is illegal? And when does crossing the line become art?

For this year’s Long Night of Museums (Lange Nacht der Museen Berlin) themed ‘Crime in Berlin’, URBAN NATION invites visitors to take a closer look at the boundaries between crime, rule-breaking, social norms, and Urban Contemporary Art.

Urban Art has always challenged conventions, operating between public and private space, legality and illegality, intervention and appropriation. During the night, the museum explores these tensions through a special program of guided tours, live painting, a neighborhood walk, and a workshop.

Explore works by more than 50 international artists in our current exhibition LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY and experience different perspectives on the city, society, and public space. On a neighborhood walk along Bülowstraße, discover large-scale murals created as part of URBAN NATION’s initiatives and learn more about art in public space.

In the museum courtyard, graffiti artists Age Age and Tomsta will reinterpret the theme of ‘Crime’ in a live-painting session, creating a collaborative work whose final form remains open until the very last spray.

And from 11 PM, Berlin graffiti artist Dejoe takes over for the late-night special ‘No Crime! – Train Sketching and Beats’. Create letters, styles, and motifs on paper or a pre-sprayed subway surface, accompanied by a DJ set.

🌙 Long Night of Museums
📅 August 29, 2026
🕞 6 PM–2 AM
📍 URBAN NATION Museum, Bülowstraße 7, Berlin

🚌 The museum is located on the red shuttle route 'Rote Linie' of the Long Night of Museums.

🎟️ Tickets and full program via the link in our bio.

📸 Photo: Nika Kramer
🪧 Graphik: Lange Nacht der Museen

18/08/2026

NEW: Explore LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY from anywhere.

What if you could discover our current exhibition from wherever you are?

Our new Virtual Tour takes you into the world of LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY through an interactive 3D experience. Move through the exhibition at your own pace, look around, and discover the works from different perspectives.

But there’s more than a digital walk through the galleries. The tour offers detailed information about selected artworks and the artists behind them, giving you the opportunity to learn more about their practices, ideas, and the stories connected to their work.

Whether you want to get a closer look before your visit, spend more time with a particular artwork, or simply can’t make it to Berlin, the Virtual Tour gives you a new opportunity to experience URBAN NATION from wherever you are.

👉 Start the Virtual Tour: https://urban-nation.com/virtual-tour/

📹 Video: Kukan AI
📸 Cover: Diana Pǎun
🎨 Art: Kenny Scharf & Owen Dippie

18/08/2026

NEW: Explore LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY from anywhere.

What if you could discover our current exhibition from wherever you are?

Our new Virtual Tour takes you into the world of LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY through an interactive 3D experience. Move through the exhibition at your own pace, look around, and discover the works from different perspectives.

But there’s more than a digital walk through the galleries. The tour offers detailed information about selected artworks and the artists behind them, giving you the opportunity to learn more about their practices, ideas, and the stories connected to their work.

Whether you want to get a closer look before your visit, spend more time with a particular artwork, or simply can’t make it to Berlin, the Virtual Tour gives you a new opportunity to experience URBAN NATION from wherever you are.

👉 Start the Virtual Tour via the link in our bio.

📹 Video: Kukan
📸 Cover: Diana Pǎun
🎨 Art: Kenny Scharf & Owen Dippie

13/08/2026

On the 65th anniversary of the er****on of the Berlin Wall, we remember a barrier that divided not only a city, but families, friendships, and everyday lives.

Today, the Wall remains a powerful reminder of how political systems can shape the urban environment. At the same time, it shows how art can reclaim these spaces, transforming sites of division into places of dialogue and memory.

The Berlin Wall Foundation preserves the history of the Berlin Wall by safeguarding historic sites, collecting testimonies and artefacts, and promoting education, research, and remembrance.

As part of our current exhibition LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY, we are honored to present two special loans from the foundation:

A interview with writer and former East German dissident Frank Willmann reflects on the 1986 artistic protest ‘The White Line', offering a firsthand account of the Wall as both an instrument of oppression and a contested site of artistic expression.

‘Mauerspechte’ documents the collective act of Berliners and visitors chipping away fragments of the Wall after 1989, celebrating the end of division while transforming its remains into personal keepsakes of freedom.

Together, these works reveal how the meaning of the Berlin Wall changed over time. It developed from a heavily guarded border to a surface for artistic intervention, and ultimately to a monument whose fragments became symbols of remembrance and reunification.

Visit LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY and experience these important stories in dialogue with contemporary artistic voices.

📸 Photo: The border wall at Potsdamer Platz © Stiftung Berliner Mauer, photo: Michael-Reiner Ernst

10/08/2026

Book Review: Urban Art Legends. Alan Ket aka KET (2016)

In Urban Art Legends, New York graffiti writer, curator, and advocate Alan Ket, known as KET, traces the artists who helped bring graffiti and street art from subculture to global recognition. Through 38 concise profiles, the book maps a movement shaped across train yards, city walls, galleries, and museums.

Spanning generations and geographies, KET highlights figures whose practices moved fluidly between street and studio, illegality and institutional recognition. Alongside color reproductions, each entry offers insight into artistic evolution, crew affiliations, and the expanding influence of urban art on contemporary visual culture.

Written from an insider’s perspective, the book is less a critical history than a curated introduction to the artists and values that shaped 'this other art world,' as Ket describes it.

Compact and image-driven, 'Urban Art Legends' works as both primer and tribute: a snapshot of the people who helped graffiti move from the margins into wider cultural recognition.

📖 Explore this publication at the Martha Cooper Library at URBAN NATION Museum Berlin. Make an appointment and drop by the reading room. More info on our website!

You can find the detailed review by Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington ()at https://urban-nation.com/about-us/martha-cooper-library/

📸 Photos: Stiftung Berliner Leben

06/08/2026

🟠 Chapters in our current exhibition:
SPACE HACKING

Urban space is public space. But who gets to shape it?

In SPACE HACKING, a chapter of our current exhibition LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY, artists reclaim overlooked corners, forgotten places, and everyday urban environments through site-specific interventions that challenge how we experience the city.

Rather than accepting urban space as fixed, they transform it into a platform for creativity, dialogue, and resistance. Their works respond to social and political realities, question the effects of urban standardization, and create spaces that foster identity and belonging.

From subtle interventions to large-scale installations, these works reshape the way we experience the urban environment. Whether temporary or permanent, playful or provocative, they invite us to see the city differently.

💌 What overlooked place in your city deserves a creative intervention?

🟠 Artists in this chapter:
Bordalo II
HA Schult
Blek Le Rat
Banksy
Octavi Serra
Mr. Paradox Paradise
The Wa & Elfo

📍 URBAN NATION Museum
Bülowstraße 7, 10783 Berlin

📸 Photo: Diana Pǎun

04/08/2026

What makes a good neighborhood?

Together with residents of Berlin's Falkenhagener Feld, German artist Jim Avignon explored this question through two new Community Walls and a ONE WALL.

The murals are part of the chapter LOVE LETTERS IN THE CITY of our current exhibition, demonstrating how urban contemporary art can respond to a specific place while creating new opportunities for dialogue.

Created in collaboration with children and young people from Familienwohnung im Kiez by Casablanca gGmbH and Outreach Spandau, both Community Walls show how artistic vision and community participation can come together in public space.

The ONE WALL invited even more people from the neighborhood to take part. Using a participation postcard designed by artist Christian Rothenhagen featuring a sketch of the building façade to be painted, residents shared their ideas through words, drawings, and personal messages. Their visions became part of the mural's final design.

As part of Stadtraum!Plus by Stiftung Berliner Leben and realized in partnership with Gewobag, the murals translate local stories and perspectives into public art.

Community Walls by Jim Avignon
📍 Im Spektefeld 32/34
📍 Kraepelinweg 15
13589 Berlin-Spandau

📅 Save the date: The official unveiling of the ONE WALL takes place on August 28, 2026, at 📍 Kraepelinweg 3.

📸 Cover photo: Felix Seyfert
🎥 Video: Graphrs

30/07/2026

3 misconceptions about Urban Art ⬇️

Urban Art is everywhere, yet it's often reduced to a single style or medium. Let's clear up a few of the most common misconceptions.

❌ Misconception #1: Urban Art is just graffiti.
Graffiti is one of Urban Art's foundational forms, but the field extends far beyond it. Murals, paste-ups, stencils, installations, sculptures, mosaics, digital interventions, and community-based projects all contribute to the rich language of Urban Art.

❌ Misconception #2: Urban Art only belongs on the streets.
While the street remains its original context and an essential point of reference, Urban Art also thrives in museums, galleries, public institutions, and private collections. Different contexts create different conversations, but the work can remain just as relevant.

❌ Misconception #3: Urban Art is only about making walls look beautiful.
Urban Art can beautify public space, but it can also challenge it. It questions power structures, preserves local stories, strengthens communities, and sparks dialogue about the places we live in and the people who shape them.

Urban Art continues to evolve because cities are constantly changing.

At URBAN NATION, we explore these many facets of Urban Art through exhibitions, public murals, educational programs, the Martha Cooper Library, and collaborations with artists from around the world. Whether you're discovering Urban Art for the first time or have followed it for years, there's always more to explore.

💬 Which misconception have you heard most often? Or what would you like to learn about Urban Art? Tell us in the comments—we might cover it in a future post!

🎨 Artwork: Brave Wall (work in progress) by Katerina Voronina
📸 Photo: Nika Kramer

29/07/2026

Meet Pietro Ruffo.

Born in Rome in 1978, Pietro Ruffo studied Architecture at the Roma Tre University before continuing his research at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University in New York. Today, his interdisciplinary practice spans drawing, painting, and installation, exploring the intersections of history, politics, ecology, and the built environment.

Ruffo has received major awards, including the Cairo Prize and the New York Prize. His art has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, as well as at institutions such as the Vatican Museums and the Zhejiang Art Museum. Furthermore, his works are part of major public and private collections around the world.

For THE URBAN SKIN, Ruffo explores architecture as a living archive, revealing traces of environmental change, social transformation, and collective memory. In dialogue with German artist Jan Bauer, he invites us to see the city as a layered surface where past and present continuously intersect.

THE URBAN SKIN
📅 July 4 – October 18, 2026
📍 URBAN NATION Project Space
Bülowstraße 97, 10783 Berlin

Opening hours:
Monday: Closed
Tuesday & Wednesday: 11 am – 6 pm
Thursday – Sunday: 1 – 8 pm

Curated by Janine Arndt and Chiara Zampetti Egidi.

Held under the patronage of the Italian Embassy in Berlin 🇮🇹

📸 Photo: Simona Poncia

Adresse

BülowStr. 7
Berlin
10783

Webseite

http://www.urban-nation.com/

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