For ten years now, Berlin’s Plein Air painter Christopher Lehmpfuhl has documented events on one of the German capital’s most spectacular building sites: the Humboldt Forum on Schlossplatz opposite Bertelsmann Unter den Linden 1. In late October 2018, Bertelsmann and Berlin’s Projektgesellschaft U5 showed 37 works from this cycle at “BAU X KUNST” (Construction Meets Art) in the huge subway construction site “Unter den Linden”.

In 2015, Bertelsmann brought “Last Folio,” a remarkable exhibition about what are perhaps the last testimonies to historical Jewish culture in Slovakia, to Germany.
The exhibition is comprised of selected art photographs taken on several trips to Slovakia by photographer Yuri Dojc and filmmaker Katya Krausova from 1997 to 2007. The artists have ancestral ties in Slovakia, but were forced to emigrate in 1968. During their joint travels, they found places that had remained virtually untouched since the mass deportations of Slovak Jews in 1942 – and came away with haunting, aesthetic photographs of decaying books, abandoned buildings and religious artifacts. The pictures give an idea of the destroyed Jewish community of Slovakia and serve as a reminder to learn from the past and keep the memory alive.
Bertelsmann financed the exhibition project, was instrumental in its implementation and marketing, and sponsored a bilingual exhibition catalog published by Kunstverlag Prestel (a Verlagsgruppe Random House imprint). Its partner was the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, whose foyer at the Haus am Kulturforum served as the exhibition venue.
In 2016, “Last Folio” was shown in South America for the first time, again with support from Bertelsmann: The exhibition was on view at the UNIBES cultural center in São Paulo from August 19th to October 22nd.