From 16:00 - 17:00. Starting point: the Van Abbe library

In her new installation Return to Rightful Owner Eva Olthof invites visitors to think about the thin line between the privacy of reading and the public space of a library. She combines ideologically loaded texts on the facades of libraries with the politics of forgetting, remembering and citing. The starting point of the installation and the eponymous book is the complex political history of the American Memorial Library (Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek, AGB) in Berlin. This was the first American style “open access public library”, founded in the 1950s as a gift to the inhabitants of West Berlin. For the first time different sorts of literature were made available there for every layer of the society . Its location, right on the border of East Berlin, was also aimed to attract the inhabitants of the Russian part of the city. Eva Olthof’s installation forms a link between memories of the American Memorial Library and the individual, and raises questions about privacy and freedom today. This exhibition presents a new installation, which was created especially for the space of the Van Abbe library, together with materials linked to the publication.

https://vanabbemuseum.nl/programma/programma/return-to-rightful-owner/