For the 2023 art autumn, the US artist Mark Dion has created a work of art from objects in the toy collection of the Stadtmuseum Berlin, which will first be on display at the Museum Nikolaikirche in Berlin. With hundreds of exhibits, his installations not only transcend space and time, but also take a critical look at children's toys themselves.

For the exhibition, Mark Dion spent months researching the collection of around 70,000 objects, one of the largest in Germany. The result is a kind of labyrinth of board games; a pyramid of animals, a circuit with an imaginary race between vehicles of all kinds and other installations. Dolls, military toys and a “poison cabinet” with borderline or cross-border toys are also on display in the exhibition, which is accompanied by a 36-page brochure (included in the admission price).

Since the late 1980s, Mark Dion has been intensively concerned with the question of how knowledge is created and passed on in museums, always with an alert eye for systems of exploitation and oppression. After all, toys, which are mostly designed by adults for children, always convey ideas about people and their world. In dealing with toys, children practise certain role models, and toys are used to teach them specific themes or ideologies.

The project is flanked by the newly developed ELLAH Lab, which aims to continuously integrate artistic engagement and creative learning into visits to the Bundeskunsthalle for young and old.

An exhibition of the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin in cooperation with the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany.