Haus der Kulturen der Welt
exhibition space and events venue in Berlin
The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), in English House of World Cultures, in Berlin is Germany's national center for the presentation and discussion of international contemporary arts, with a special focus on non-European cultures and societies. It presents art exhibitions, theater and dance performances, concerts, author readings, films and academic conferences on visual art and culture. It is one of the institutions which, due to their national and international standing and the quality of their work, receive funding from the federal government as so-called "lighthouses of culture", from the Federal Minister of State for Culture and the Media as well as from the Federal Foreign Office. As a venue and collaboration partner, HKW has hosted festivals such as the transmediale, curatorial platforms, biennials such as the Berlin Documentary Forum, and mentorship programs such as Forecast. Since 2013, its interdisciplinary elaboration on the Anthropocene discourse has included conferences, exhibitions, and other artistic formats performed together with philosophers, scientists, and artists, such as Bruno Latour and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.
Location and history
The Haus der Kulturen der Welt is located in the Tiergarten park, and directly neighbors the Carillon and the new German Chancellery.
The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft of Magnus Hirschfeld occupied the grounds before World War II. In remembrance of the institute a bar inside Hause der Kulturen der Welt is named Magnus Hirschfeld Bar and a garden is named after Lili Elbe.
It was formerly known as the Kongresshalle conference hall, a gift from the United States, designed in 1957 by the American architect Hugh Stubbins as a part of the Interbau, an International Building Exhibition. U.S. President John F. Kennedy spoke here at a trade union meeting during his June 1963 visit to West Berlin. On 21 May 1980, the roof collapsed, killing a Sender Freies Berlin radio station journalist and injuring numerous people.
The public source identifies “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” as exhibition space and events venue in Berlin. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Haus, Kulturen and Welt.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q704933. VIAF identifies the subject as 158140811. The Library of Congress control number is n91024052. Authority coordinates are 52.519, 13.365. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 1957, 1963 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.