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Between the Lines: Daniel Libeskind and the Jewish Museum Berlin
For the building's 25th anniversary, drawings and models trace how Libeskind's 1989 competition design became one of the most influential museum buildings. Free.
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Stand in the Eric F. Ross Gallery and you can find the same room, in miniature, on one of the three architectural models. Libeskind's "Names Model" (1989 to 1991) sits on a base papered with pages from the memorial book of murdered German Jews: a name, a deportation date, then "missing" or "declared dead".
The show marks the building's 25th anniversary and Libeskind's 80th birthday, and its curator calls it tightly focused: how the 1989 competition design got built while Berlin reunified. The design drawing quotes Paul Celan, Walter Benjamin, Kleist and Rahel Varnhagen, and on it Libeskind wrote out a passage from Jeremiah in Hebrew across three metres.
Entry is free, on the ground level of the Libeskind Building, with seating and texts in German and English. The JMB app has an audio guide in seven languages, so bring headphones. The touchable model of the building is in the basement axes on your way in, not in the show. It closes on 22 November.
Editor's pick
For the building's 25th anniversary, drawings and models trace how Daniel Libeskind's 1989 competition design became one of the most influential museum buildings. Admission is free.
Look for
The Names Model
Look at the base: it is lined with printed deportation lists from the memorial book of murdered German Jews, each entry a name and a date.
Jeremiah, three metres long
On the design drawing Libeskind wrote out a Hebrew passage from Jeremiah by hand, very precisely, over three metres.
The Sachsenhausen model
His 1993 competition model for the former SS barracks at Sachsenhausen, where he proposed flooding parts of the site and planting trees instead of dense housing.
The gallery's own windows
Libeskind's slashed windows cut diagonally through one wall, opened as far as the fragile paper model allows, and the room dims as it runs back toward Kadishman's Fallen Leaves.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want objects from Jewish life: this is architectural drawings and models about the building itself.
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Image credits
9
- Between the Lines: Daniel Libeskind and the Jewish Museum BerlinCourtesy of Jewish Museum Berlin
- 3hd 2026: Beyond Imagining© Saish Kotecha
- Lovis Corinth. Then came Berlin!© Hilti Art Foundation, Photo: Günter König
- Josef Kaiser. Building for the GDR© Foto Schlegel, digitized by A. E. Witte
- Jewish Museum BerlinMarek Śliwecki / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Berlinische GalerieChristoph Rehbach / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Topography of TerrorStiftung Topographie des Terrors / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
- Gropius BauManfred Brückels / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Deutsches TechnikmuseumSpyrosdrakopoulos / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0