Deutschland of Opportunity

In Once-Divided Berlin, a Vibrant Art Scene Has Coalesced

BERLIN -- You start your walk in a squeaky-clean Renaissance neighborhood, re-created almost from scratch by a moribund communist government eager to pretend it was still hale. A street or two still farther east, you're in a canyon of cheerless concrete housing fronted by an urban artery, a more authentic creation of that former government. A minute or two along that avenue, and you hit signs of the avid capitalism that's come since the regime's collapse: a sprawling car dealership all in plate glass, alongside a carwash knocked together by some budding entrepreneur. And tucked behind the carwash, the graffiti-covered archways of a railway overpass, such as you'd expect in the neglected corners of almost any boomtown.

But, unlike what you'd find in other cities, these archways have been closed in. Walk through their unassuming metal doors, and you find a suite of high-tech spaces, all white walls and polished concrete floors, where the latest in contemporary art is shown and sold.

This is today's Berlin: a mix of old Disneyfication, new construction and eager renovation. And, tucked into any corners still waiting to find a place within that mix, a burgeoning world of contemporary creativity that makes the city one of the most dynamic art centers on the planet and a magnet for outsiders. In Berlin, the future isn't fixed, so artists from near and far can still imagine finding a place in it.

"Every time someone comes here from New York, their eyes open wide," says Stephanie Snider, who was one of those wide-eyed former New Yorkers when she arrived on an American-funded art scholarship a few years back. She hadn't always planned on putting Berlin on her re{acute}sume{acute}, but once she got to know the city and the promise it holds out to artists, it was hard to tear herself away. Her scholarship is over but the 32-year-old Snider is still in town, part of a buzzing community of expatriate artists, including many Americans, who have chosen to make Berlin their base of operations.

Snider doesn't act the part of radical Berliner. She's more likely to wear Banana Republic than black leather. Her art, a mix of pristine architectural maquettes -- they could be studies for elegant stage sets -- and modestly cryptic watercolors, is also more uptown than down-and-dirty. She insists that anyplace you find her by definition can't be groovy -- even as she lunches in an evidently groovy part of old Kreuzberg, just down from where she lives. But then, her Berlin isn't quite the hard-hitting city of screen and song -- the Berlin of "Cabaret" or of U2's "Zoo Station." It's a Berlin where artists come because they plan to get things done.

Over the past 10 years, Berlin has come as close as the contemporary art scene comes to re-creating the appeal that Paris had for artists at the beginning of the 20th century. There are no Picassos or Matisses in Berlin right now, and it can't claim worldwide aesthetic dominance. But it has some of the energy Paris had, and some of that city's sense of ever-present possibility.