This exhibition was not to be missed. The first—and perhaps, unfortunately, the last—massive museum survey of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and film made in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the forty years of its existence (1949–89), “Kunst in der DDR” (Art in the GDR) couldn’t have been timelier. Its opening coincided, albeit unintentionally, with a cresting wave of nostalgia in Germany for East Germany. Six and a half million viewers watched the inaugural episode of the DDR Show on German television the first week in September, and almost as many—six

There is something for everyone in Joep van Liefland’s “Video Palace,” a fully operational video rental store that the Dutch artist has been setting up illegally in abandoned buildings around Berlin over the past two years. In its latest version, VP went official—or as official as XXXrated can get—and took over the entire space of a gallery. You enter the makeshift space at your own risk and inevitably leave with a strong sense of the strangeness of contemporary culture—whether you’ve watched Wrestling Super Stars in the VP Test-Corner, enjoyed the video of the month, Cannibal