Long Night of Munich Museums 2024

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?