General Information

The Deichtorhallen is one of the best known exhibition institutions worldwide. The historical buildings are divided into an exhibition hall for contemporary art and the „House of Photography.“ Together the two buildings organize a highly diverse program of changing exhibitions.

What were once two market halls, today provide some 6,000 square meters of exhibition area forming one of Europe’s largest centers for art exhibitions. „...Anyone who hates that museum feel will love the old halls; no sense of claustrophobia here, a modern ambience, and the shows are always exciting,“ is how the magazine „MarieClaire“ describes the Deichtorhallen. The editors of the annual CAPITAL-Kunstkompass art guide rank the Deichtorhallen among their group of only ten internationally important museums and art institutions alongside the likes of the Guggenheim and MOMA, New York, the Stedelijk, Amsterdam, the Tate Modern, London and the Center Georges Pompidou, Paris.

The restored halls were donated by the Körber Foundation to the city of Hamburg. In 1989 they were assigned to the Deichtorhallen-Ausstellungs GmbH. The Deichtorhallen’s international art exhibition program was launched by Harald Szeemann who curated the first show „Einleuchten“ which opened on November 9, 1989. Hamburg received, in this way, what Boris Groys termed a „temporary museum.“

The Deichtorhallen first opened to the public in 1989 under the aegis of John_Erik Berganus and after 13 years with Dr. Zdenek Felix successfully acting as its director, Dr. Robert Fleck was appointed director in January 2004. Since September 2003, Prof. F.C. Gundlach has acted as founding director of the House of Photography in the Deichtorhallen.

In the course of its history, the Deichtorhallen Hamburg has emerged as an exhibition institution for photography and contemporary art resting on two institutional foundations – in other words, it functions as two houses beneath a single roof. Moreover, time slots are kept free for outside events. Since 1989, the halls have showcased more than 100 major exhibition projects. In addition to key solo shows on renowned artists such as Andy Warhol, Marc Chagall, Keith Haring, Martin Kippenberger or Louise Bourgeois, more recent positions in art have repeatedly been highlighted since a very early date in the form of major exhibitions. They have included comprehensive shows by such artists as Andreas Gursky (1994), Cindy Sherman (1995), Jason Rhoades (1999), Andrea Zittel (1999), Elizabeth Peyton (2001) and Wolfgang Tillmans (2001). Furthermore, thematic and group exhibitions have gone on tour as have renowned international art collections such as the Center Pompidou Collection (1990) or the Goetz Collection (1998 - 1999).

Since its reopening in April 2005, the House of Photography has organized exhibitions spotlighting the diversity of photography, presenting unknown but world class photographers as well as photographic stars since photography’s beginnings in the 19th century through to the current upheaval marked by the transition from traditional to digital-electronic photographs.

The central element in all this is the F.C. Gundlach Collection, one of the leading collections of art and fashion photography which the Deichtorhallen succeeded in keeping in Hamburg. It is on permanent loan to the Deichtorhallen and will be shown gradually over the upcoming years juxtaposed with works from the international world of photography.

Since 2005, this permanent loan has been supplemented by the wide-ranging image archive of DER SPIEGEL magazine: the largest, accessible, journalist research database in Germany.

In dialogue with the exhibitions, large-scale projects will focus on contemporary artistic positions in the north Deichtorhall – the largest, coherent exhibition space for contemporary art in Europe. The emphasis will be on solo shows by painters, sculptors, photographich artists and designers of international repute. The projects will usually be developed as site-specific exhibitions in close cooperation with the artists.

There will also be regular exhibitions programmatically designed to relate to culture and everyday life, and not to forget, cultural history. These shows will intentionally address the public at large.

In addition to important internation exhibitions on art and photography, the new institution is also busy developing a broad swath of teaching activities and a scholarly program. They all take the F.C. Gundlach Collection as their departure point and are intended to enhance the Deichtorhallen’s role as a place for encounters with art and contemporary creative ideas.

In 2005, the Deichtorhallen is showing eight exhibitions dedicated to works that hinge on central ideas of 21st century photography and the visual arts. Either the Deichtorhallen is the only institution in Germany showing the exhibitions or they get started here. The program ranges from an in-depth retrospective of one of the most influential photographers of the 1930’s, Martin Munkácsi, to the rediscovery of Dokoupil, a central painter of the 1980’s.