Julia Stoschek to Close Berlin Foundation Venue After a Decade
Julia Stoschek, one of the most prominent collectors of time-based art, will close the Berlin venue of her foundation at the end of October 2026, ending a 10-year run in the former Czech Cultural Center on Leipziger Straße. The 3,000-square-meter space opened in 2016 and has since become a steady platform for video, film, performance, installation, and virtual reality, hosting about 22 exhibitions and numerous public programs for roughly 450,000 visitors.
The closure does not signal a retreat from the city entirely. In a statement, Stoschek said Berlin remains “a central point of reference” and a place that has “profoundly shaped the work of the Foundation.” The Stoschek Foundation will continue to operate its Düsseldorf venue, which has been open since 2007, while placing greater emphasis on international presentations of the collection.
That shift is already visible in Los Angeles, where the foundation recently presented “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem,” a six-week exhibition organized by guest curator Udo Kittelmann. The show drew more than 30,000 visitors and brought together work by Marina Abramović, Doug Aitken, Chris Burden, Paul Chan, Maya Deren, Cyprien Gaillard, Anne Imhof, Arthur Jafa, Paul McCarthy, Ana Mendieta, Precious Okoyomon, Jacolby Satterwhite, Sturtevant, and Jordan Wolfson, among others.
Stoschek, an Top 200 collector, established the foundation in 2002. Her collection now includes more than 1,000 works by 300 artists from the 1960s to the present, reflecting a sustained commitment to moving-image and performance-based practices. The Berlin venue’s closure follows earlier reports, in 2020, that rising real estate prices could force a change. For now, the foundation appears to be recalibrating rather than contracting — keeping one German base while widening the geography of its exhibitions.
