The Long Night of Museums
Long Night of Munich Museums 2024: High-rise tour and visit to A&T 5-10 on 19 October
In honour of the "Long Night of Munich Museums 2024", the European Patent Office is opening up its headquarters on the banks of the Isar, from the basement up to the top floor, offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at the building. Visitors will be invited to take part in guided tours of its contemporary art collection and architectural tours of the – now listed – distinctive ten-storey building with its glass façade, which was built between 1976 and 1980 by the renowned architects von Gerkan, Marg & Partners. The building's monument status was awarded primarily because of its historical and artistic attributes, as well as its significance in terms of urban planning. It marks the first time that a European institution had its headquarters in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The high-rise tours offer an opportunity to experience the classics of the collection up close, for example Bernhard Luginbühl's Blauer Ritter, Rolf Lieberknecht's Kinetic Light Refractions or Fausto Melotti's Rondeau Musical. Some established contemporary artists occupy entire floors of the high-rise building (Jaroslaw Flicinski, Esther Stocker, Ekrem Yalcindag, José Loureiro, Malene Landgreen). The fifth floor exhibits new acquisitions from young emerging artists (Arjan Shehaj, Kristi Kongi, Afra Eisma). Some artworks are even to be found in former telephone booths (Günter Uecker, Attila Csörgö, Klemens Schillinger, Jean Tinguely).
A special attraction is the Culture Space A&T 5-10 in the basement of the building, which was created from the redesign of an area of around 3 000 m2 and inaugurated last year to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the European Patent Convention. Originally housing a repro facility, a storeroom for office supplies and an extensive file archive (all of which became obsolete following a digital and ecological transformation), this space was reconceived as a new place for learning and experience for employees, students and visitors.
Spread across 3 000 m2, Culture Space A&T 5-10 encompasses an exciting mixture of projects at the interface between contemporary art, technology, society, architecture and design, as well as a catering and co-working space, and also hosts a series of exhibitions:
- a lab engaging with the theme of "Transformation" with ten, partly newly acquired, contemporary art works (Wolfgang Tillmans, Irene Sauter, Jan-Robert Leegte, Tom Burr, Péter Szalay, Jānis Dzirnieks, AVPD (Aslan Vibæk/Peter Døssing), Thomas Feuerstein, Dorothea Dolinšek, Davide Quayola)
- an immersive project space, "Deep vision", with digital commissioned works by Quadrature ("Pulse of the EPO") and Ars electronica ("Gigapixel")
- a bar designed by Esther Stocker as a commissioned work ("Cosmic Bar")
- a showroom with over 350 works from the EPO's contemporary art collection
- an exhibition on "Art and Climate Change" in the former repro facility
- the section Next generation statements: CoLab for International Peace – young art from Estonia and Ukraine as a guest exhibition in the European Patent Office
- a permanent exhibition on the history and architecture of the European Patent Office
In the new special exhibition "Transformation", we address the pressing issues and questions of our digitised society as it comes to term with technological progress: do we consider our online behaviour enough in relation to the risks of big data? How does artificial intelligence learn? How are robotics and increasing automation changing the role of humans in the development of innovations? Why are we permanently contactable online and how does this change our experience of time? How fragile is our relationship with nature? And will it be possible not only to visit other planets but also to make them habitable through suitable food cultivation?
Programme
Plan your visit to the European Patent Office
Two different tour routes are available:
Route I: HIGH-RISE BUILDING
Meeting point: main entrance to the EPO, Bob-van-Benthem-Platz 1, every hour, starting at 6 pm, each tour lasts 60 minutes.
Route II: Culture Space A&T 5-10 (basement)
Meeting point: entrance to A&T 5-10 (accessed via Kohlstrasse), every half-hour, starting at 6 pm, each tour lasts about 45 minutes.
Registration for the guided tours is not required. The tours are being provided on a first‑come, first‑served basis in groups of up to 30 people.
Guided tours are available in German, English and French, as well as in plain language.
Guided tours and map
Please refer to the following tables for the times of the guided tours:
- Guided tours High-rise building (Entry: Route I)
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Time Duration Language 18.00 hrs 60 min DE 19.00 hrs 60 min DE 20.00 hrs 60 min DE 21.00 hrs 60 min EN 22.00 hrs 60 min DE 23.00 hrs 60 min DE 00.00 hrs 60 min DE - Guided tours Culture Space A&T 5-10 (Entry: Route II)
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Uhrzeit Dauer Sprache 18.00 hrs 45 min DE 18.30 hrs 45 min DE 19.00 hrs 45 min DE 19.30 hrs 45 min DE (plain language) 20.00 hrs 45 min DE 20.30 hrs 45 min DE 21.00 hrs 45 min EN 21.30 hrs 45 min DE 22.00 hrs 45 min FR 22.30 hrs 45 min DE 23.00 hrs 45 min DE 23.30 hrs 45 min DE 00.00 hrs 45 min DE
Previous years
- 2023
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The Long Night of Museums 2023: a new cultural space at the EPO
On 5 October, the European Patent Office (EPO) celebrated the 50th anniversary of the signing of the European Patent Convention in Munich. In honour of this occasion, our headquarters on the banks of the Isar were opened on the "Long Night of Munich Museums", from the basement up to the top floor, giving visitors an exclusive look behind the scenes.
Visitors to the "Long Night of Munich Museums" were invited to take part in guided tours of our contemporary art collection and architectural tours of our - now listed - distinctive steel and concrete building with its glass facade, which was built between 1976 and 1980 by the renowned architects von Gerkan, Marg & Partners.
The main attraction was our completely redesigned cultural space, which has been reconfigured to mark the anniversary and has now been introduced to the public. It arose from the reconception of a basement space measuring around 3000 m², which among other things used to house a printing department and former storage for files, spaces which were no longer needed following the office's digital and ecological transformation.
After almost two years of revitalising the space, a totally new concept of use emerged. Waiting to be discovered were a new permanent exhibition on the EPO's history and architecture, a laboratory of the future with media art installations that focus on technology and society, an artist's studio with newly acquired works by young Estonian and Ukrainian artists, a black box for immersive projects and site-specific commissioned works, a co-working space for staff, and a bar designed by artist Esther Stocker, which is a site-specific commission measuring almost 300 m². Also new was the presentation of works from the EPO's art collection in a warehouse exhibition and in a special themed exhibition on art and climate change.In the course of the refurbishment, two renowned guest curators were invited to curate two sections of the space: Pascal Griset, Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and Capacity for Corporate History, who conceived an extensive permanent exhibition about the history of the EPO to mark its 50th anniversary; and the Ars electronica's export team (from Linz, Austria), which undertook a project to integrate media art installations into the former patent file archives in a way that ensured minimum interference - the installations concern urgent issues and questions for the future of our society, for example our approach to big data and artificial intelligence, sleep as climate technology, the human footprint and its consequences for the world's oceans, sustainable production of materials or the exploration of new living environments in space.
The "Long Night" opened with a programme for children in the afternoon before the guided tours through the new cultural space and the building began in the early evening.
