It’s hard to miss Lars Ramberg’s Palast des Zweifels (Palace of Doubt), 2005. The word ZWEIFEL (doubt)—written in three-story-tall letters sculpted in aluminum and filled with white neon-tube lighting—glows from atop the empty Palast der Republik, which is due to be demolished this fall. The former East German parliament building—and a civic-cum-entertainment center offering restaurants and bowling—was closed due to asbestos in September 1990, just weeks after what was touted as the GDR’s first freely elected government voted to join the Federal Republic. When the Palast reopened as a gutted

Belgian artist David Claerbout illuminated the relative and shifting nature of perceptual time—geological, historical, episodic, linear, emotionally and culturally mediated—in his striking exhibition “Background Time.” Together the dynamically changing city of Berlin, with its transparent historical strata, and the Akademie der Künste, seemingly frozen in time among other modernist icons of the Hansaviertel district, made an uncanny setting for this ensemble of six works. The gallery’s expansive layout also provided an effective time sequence between the two-part video installation American