The Ivy Circle cordially invites you to a special evening at the Auto & Art Gallery called ART | CIGARS & LONG DRINKS to take place Thursday, January 15, 2026 from 6:00 PM at the Auto & Art Gallery, Nachtalbenweg 61, 13088 Berlin.
The event will feature an art exhibit from artist Michael Dynne Mieth, complimentary long drinks, and cigars all taking place amid the unique space of Auto and Art Gallery.
The evening’s host is Mr. Jürgen Form, the gallery owner, who is a Berlin-based entrepreneur and art collector. The gallery space functions as both a showroom for classic cars (oldtimers) and an exhibition space for contemporary art.
Over the years, the gallery has hosted numerous exhibitions featuring international and German artists, such as Wilfried Fitzenreiter and Hans Scheib.
The space includes a café-lounge and is often used for events that bring together the business community and the diplomatic corps.
Jürgen Form also serves as the President of the Association of Economic Consuls in Berlin-Brandenburg (Vereinigung der Wirtschaftskonsuln in Berlin-Brandenburg e.V., or VWK), a professional network that fosters relationships between the diplomatic corps, economic representatives, and political leaders in the capital region. Several members of the Berlin diplomatic corps will be in attendance.
Artist Michael Dyne Mieth is a painter, sculptor and multimedia artist living in Berlin, whose art is exhibited internationally and always attracts attention due to his visionary motives. Some of his work includes his massive “G18” in which he revisits and reimagines Picasso’s Guernica, which has forever inscribed itself in art history as an appeal for peace. G18 was exhibited along with Pablo Picasso’s original Guernica at the Imperial Hofburg Museum in Innsbruck during the anti-war exhibition GUERNICA – “Icon of Peace.
Please RSVP to Carl Kruse at carl@alumni.princeton.edu so that we have an idea of the crowd for drinks and such.
I look forward to seeing you on January 15th for what should be a beautiful evening.
The Harvard Club of Berlin invites the Ivy Circle to another event as part of their “Insight Industrial Berlin” to take place Wednesday, January 14, 2026 at 6:30pm at the Berlin offices of Idealo. The full invite from the Harvard Club is below.
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The Harvard Club of Berlin is pleased to invite you to another event of our “Insight Industrial Berlin” series on Wednesday, January 14, 2026 at 6:30 pm.
We are delighted that Harvard alumnus Jovan Protić has invited us to the premises of idealo in the new Axel Springer building for his lecture “How artificial intelligence will change our lives and our economy: Lessons from Silicon Valley.”
About the Speaker:
Jovan Protić is Managing Director at idealo, Europe’s leading price comparison platform. He brings nearly two decades of experience in media and digital leadership, having played a central role in driving the digital transformation of media companies across Europe. Most recently Jovan was representing the Axel Springer group in Silicon Valley working on shaping AS AI future.
He began his career in 2005 at Ringier Axel Springer in Serbia, joined the leadership team of Ringier Axel Springer Media AG in 2016 as a COO – overlooking digital media transformation in nine CEE markets. Parallel to this role, since 2018 he held senior roles at Ringier Axel Springer Poland, most recently serving as Vice President of the Management Board from 2023. Throughout his career, he has launched more than 20 digital media and e-commerce products and established market-leading news portals in nine countries.
About the Lecture:
In his session, Jovan Protić examines how artificial intelligence will reshape the way we live, work, and do business. Drawing on six months spent in Silicon Valley studying leading media and e-commerce innovators, he shares the most influential ideas, technologies, and business models emerging from the global tech epicenter.
Jovan connects these insights with his hands-on leadership experience in European digital media and e-commerce, previously at Ringier Axel Springer and now at idealo. He highlights how AI-driven concepts can be translated into practical strategies, showing that the future of innovation is shaped not only in Silicon Valley, but also in the everyday decisions and ecosystems closer to home.
Tickets:
Members: 15 € p.p.
Non-members: 20 € p.p.
Attendance is limited to 35 guests.
Registration until January 8, 2026:
Please register via the following link: Registration
Payment options:
Bank transfer: Please transfer the ticket to our bank account:
Where: Idealo Internet GmbH, Zimmerstrasse 50, 10888 Berlin
The Harvard Club Berlin sees itself as a politically neutral institution. With its selection of speakers and venues, the HCB does not align itself with any political positions but rather wants to create space for open and respectful discussion.
The Wharton Alumni Club of Germany and Austria invites the Ivy Circle to their Thanksgiving art and dinner event to take place on November 25, 2025. The event consists of an exclusive private tourat Villa Grisebach, led by Daniel v. Schacky (Managing Partner and UPenn alumnus), who will guide us through the highlights of the upcoming winter art auction and share his insights on how AI is shaping the art world.
Afterward, we’ll stroll across Ludwigkirchplatz for a cozy Thanksgiving Dinner at Restaurant Kuchel-Eck – a classic Berlin spot perfect for good food and even better conversation.
You’ll find the full invitation with details and registration link below.
Wharton Thanksgiving in BerlinVilla Grisebach and Restaurant Kuchel-Eck
Dear Ivy Circle Berlin & Friends,We are happy to invite you to a special Wharton Thanksgiving on Tuesday, November 25 at 6 PM in Berlin. Join us for an exclusive tour of the pre-exhibition for the upcoming Winter Auction at Villa Grisebach and a Thanksgiving Dinner at Restaurant Kuckel-Eck.
Daniel v. Schacky, Managing Partner at Grisebach and UPenn Alumnus, will guide us through selected highlights of the exhibition and share his insights on the growing influence of artificial intelligence in the art world.
After this inspiring dive into the world of Art and Auctions, we will head over the Ludwig-Kirchplatz and celebrate the Wharton Thanksgiving Dinner at the typical German Restaurant Kuchel-Eck.
Event Details 6:00 PM – Tour at Villa Grisebach (please arrive a few minutes early so we can start on time!) Address:Fasanenstraße 25, 10719 Berlin8:00 PM – Thanksgiving-Dinner at Kuchel-Eck Address:Ludwigkirchplatz 1, 10719 Berlin
Participation FeesMembers • Art Event & Dinner (½ Duck or Vegetarian Dish incl. Water): €40 • Art Event only: €10Non-Members • Art Event & Dinner (½ Duck or Vegetarian Dish incl. Water): €50 • Art Event only: €20Please note: Additional drinks are not included and will be billed individually.
Please sign up for the event directly here:THANKSGIVING 2025 in BerlinIn case of any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.We look forward to an inspiring and joyful evening and can’t wait to seeing you again.Best wishes,
Friend of the Ivy Circle, artist Yury Kharchenko invites us to the opening of the exhibit “Bad/Good Jews,” to take place November 13, 2025 at 7pm at Bunker West, Hohenzollerndamm 120, 14199 Berlin. The exhibit runs through November 27, 2025.
The exhibition “Bad / Good Jews” brings together five outstanding Jewish artists: Alexander Melamid, Yury Kharchenko, Art Spiegelman, Marat Guelman and Michael Grobman. The curators are Aljoscha Samjatin and Yury Kharchenko.
At its core, the exhibition addresses the question of Jewish identity in the 21st century, with October 7, 2023 – the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians – viewed as a turning point, evoking memories of the Shoah and highlighting the continued vulnerability of Jewish life worldwide. The artists observe that Jews are targeted by both right-wing antisemitism (e.g., Holocaust denial, ethnonationalist ideologies) and left-wing antisemitism (justification of terror, demonization of Israel). In European cultural discourse, this manifests as a split between “good” and “bad” Jews – depending on political narratives.
“Bad / Good Jews” resists such labeling. The exhibition explores how art reflects and transforms historical trauma, religious tradition, digital technologies, and political rupture. The works span painting and graphic art, conceptual positions, and projects involving artificial intelligence.
The Artists
Alexander Melamid In his series Ten Other Jews of the 20th Century, Alexander Melamid provocatively questions the standard Jewish historical icons by juxtaposing them with anti-heroes – figures marginalized or excluded from collective memory. This contrast is more than artistic provocation; it challenges viewers to reconsider the construction of guilt, identity, and memory. Melamid exposes how history is selectively told and how remembrance can both produce and deny political narratives.
Yury Kharchenko Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Kharchenko’s visual language has undergone a radical shift – becoming more direct and urgent. His works bring Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) symbols into dialogue with quotes from Jean Améry. He also presents a provocative juxtaposition of pop culture and historical memory: superheroes and Disney characters appear in front of the Auschwitz gate – the symbol of the industrial murder of European Jews.
In this context, these iconic figures lose their dominant symbolism – they seem disempowered, almost helpless in the face of resurging violence and contemporary antisemitism. Alongside these images, the slogan “From the river to the sea” appears – a phrase that, especially after October 7, has become for many a direct threat to Jewish life.
Kharchenko’s works navigate the fragile boundary between memory and present, between trauma and political reality. His art challenges the certainties of history and identity, compelling the audience to confront the fractured state of Jewish life today.
In “Bad / Good Jews,” Kharchenko’s work forms the emotional and intellectual core of the exhibition – a powerful artistic intervention against oversimplification and categorization, against the division into “good” and “bad” Jews. His images are a call for resistance, remembrance, and self-determination.
Art Spiegelman Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman, globally recognized for his graphic novel Maus, presents a complex visual language in Crossroads (Wandering Jews). He merges medieval iconography with contemporary motifs to trace both ruptures and continuities in Jewish history. Spiegelman’s works are powerful reminders that the post-Holocaust vow of “Never again” is increasingly under threat. His images serve as both places of remembrance and urgent warnings – against forgetting, against downplaying atrocities.
Michael Grobman A key figure of the “Second Russian Avant-Garde” and a resident of Israel since the 1970s, Michael Grobman weaves mystical elements and Jewish history into his art. His works incorporate motifs from Kabbalah, a profound Jewish mystical tradition, alongside painful memories of the Shoah. Grobman’s painting evokes spiritual depth, treating trauma not only as something to be reflected upon but as part of an ongoing process of healing and identity formation. His art expresses a continuous search for meaning and belonging.
Marat Guelman Marat Guelman views his work as an homage to his Jewish identity, to his mother, and to the conscious experience of that identity. In his creative process, he “tries on” different artistic roles – a method that has become central to his practice. For Bad / Good Jews, he appears as a kind of “Jewish Andy Warhol” – a persona born from a late but profound awareness of his Jewish roots.
Significance of the Exhibition Bad / Good Jews is an artistic dialogue about Jewish heritage, responsibility, and the future. In a bunker built by the Nazis, Jewish art becomes an act of resistance: it gives voice to the victims, rejects the division into “good” and “bad” Jews, and asserts the right to life, remembrance, and self-determination.
Volker Beck, President of the German-Israeli Society and Sergey Lagodinsky, member of European Parliament will give short presentations.
The Harvard Club of Berlin invites us to an evening discussion with renown author Jamaica Kincaid on November 5 at 6:30pm at Restaurant Luther & Wegner, Charlottenstr. 56 10117 Berlin.
P.S. Stammtisch, Tuesday, Nov 4 at Fredericks in Potsdammer Platz.
Dear members and friends of the Harvard Community in Berlin,
The Harvard Cub of Berlin is honored to invite you to a Leadership Dinner with Jamaica Kincaid.
Jamaica Kincaid will begin with a short reading followed by a conversation on her experiences as a writer and professor at Harvard University as well as her impressions so far as an American Academy Fellow in Germany.
The evening will be moderated by Clara Péron, the club’s vice president.
About Jamica Kincaid:
Jamaica Kincaid is a writer and Professor Emerita of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She holds honorary degrees from Amherst College, Tufts University, Middlebury College, and the University of the West Indies, among others. Celebrated for her evocative reflections on family, memory, gender, colonialism, her native Antigua, and gardening, Kincaid is the author of numerous award-winning and widely translated essays, short stories, and novels, including At the Bottom of the River (1983), Annie John (1985), Lucy (1990), A Small Place (1988), The Autobiography of My Mother (1996), My Brother (1997), Mr. Potter (2002), Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalayas (2005), See Now Then (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), and most recently An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children (with Kara Walker; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024). Her “Talk of the Town” columns for The New Yorker appeared in Talk Stories (2001). She is the winner of the 2022 Paris Review Hadada Prize for Lifetime Achievement, 2017 Dan David Prize, a 2014 American Book Award and 2000 Prix Femina Étranger, among many other awards. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.
We look forward to seeing you at our Leadership Dinner.
When?: Wednesday, November 5, 2025, at 6:30 pm
Where?: Restaurant Luther & Wegner
Charlottenstraße 56, 10117 Berlin
Dresscode: Smart Casual
Tickets:
Members & partners: 45 € p.p.
Non-Members: 55 € p.p.
Welcome drinks and two course menu are included.
Drinks with the meal will be charged separately.
30 tickets are available for this event.
Please register via the following link: Registration until October 29, 2025.
Payment options:
Bank transfer: Please transfer the ticket to our bank account:
Something of a last minute invite courtesy of Bill Woodward – an evening with journalist Elizabeth Kolbert taking place Monday, September 22 at 7pm at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Please see the invite below for full information.
Cheers!
Carl Kruse Ivy Circle
You are warmly invited to join us for the conversation
Our Climate Past and Future: An Evening with Elizabeth Kolbert, Journalist and Pulitzer Prize Laureate
Monday, September 22, 2025 7:00 pm CET/GMT+1 Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities Jägerstr. 22-23, 10117 Berlin
Climate change continues to reshape both domestic and global policy and politics on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite a shared reality in how the world is changing around us, Europe and the United States under President Trump are approaching the crisis in dramatically different ways. In conversation with Joshua Yaffa Bard College Berlin’s writer-in-residence, prominent journalist and Pulitzer Prize laureate, Elizabeth Kolbert, will share stories, and prognoses from the frontlines of a changing climate. Kolbert will speak to the way humans are changing the world around them, and how those changes reflect back on humanity. She will also address the current state of climate politics and policy in the U.S. and Europe—a gap in approach and even basic understanding that is quickly widening to a gulf. Is it possible to speak of a shared transatlantic climate policy, or even climate understanding? And can technology save us if politics doesn’t?
The Ivy Circle Berlin would like to invite all to its third Art Brunch at the studio of Helena Kauppila, on Sunday, October 5, 2025, starting at 11:45 am on the fourth floor of Ackerstrasse 81, 13355 Berlin.
There will be a welcome drink, some finger foods, and a brief introduction by the artist at 12:15 pm.
A mathematician turned painter, Helena is fascinated by complexity and emerging systems. While her colorful paintings may appear random and disjointed, there is a systems thinking behind them, often anchored in mathematics. Her work touches on the structure of DNA, mathematical theories, and the human connection to nature and the world around us.
Helena is excited to share new work from her Complex Systems series, along with a sneak preview of a collaboration with TU Berlin.
Helena writes, “The Complex Systems series is the thread running through all of my work. It grew out of a desire to bring together color, science, and lived experience to explore how individuals connect to larger systems. My background in mathematics introduced me to complex systems — phenomena where simple parts combine to create something entirely new. Think of neurons firing to create conscious thought, or the dynamics of an ecosystem: each element plays a role, yet together they form something far greater than themselves.
This idea of emergence fascinates me. It resonates not only with the scientific ideas I encountered in my research, but also with my own personal journey of moving between countries, adapting to new cultures, and finding belonging within a whole.
In my paintings, I use simple elements that, when combined, generate complex color spaces. These forms resist traditional figure–ground relationships; instead, they evoke the statistical properties of a scene — suggesting a world where meaning emerges from patterns rather than from hierarchy.”
Kauppila resides in Berlin. She holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Columbia University and is the recipient of the Reginald Marsh and Felicia Meyer Marsh scholarship at the Art Students League of New York.
RSVP helpful (but not required).
At 1 pm other ateliers in the building open as well, so there will be further opportunity to explore other art and meet other artists.
Friend of the Ivy Circle and Columbia alum Helena Kauppila invites all to the opening reception of Ein guter Grund, a duo exhibition at Alter Kiosk Berlin. The event takes place on Friday, July 18th, starting at 6 pm, and there will be a performance.
Opening Reception Ein guter Grund Ernst Handl and Helena Kauppila Friday, July 18, 2025 6 pm
Gallery location Alter Kiosk Berlin Grunewaldstraße 27 12165 Berlin-Steglitz
The exhibition’s title Ein guter Grund plays on the layered meanings of the German word Grund—referring both to a motive or reason, and to the painted ground that forms the essential base of a work. This duality reflects both Helena’s and Handl’s shared interest in how thoughtful beginnings—whether philosophical or material—shape the unfolding of artistic process.
The exhibition unfolds along a circular route through eight interconnected rooms, including an underground section presenting some video works, and a tall transitional passage that holds Handl’s large textile piece suspended from the ceiling. Several sunlit rooms will be filled with their paintings, including Helena’s recent work Spring! (2025), 30 x 30 cm, oil on linen. Inspired by the special yellow light as spring arrives, this is one of Helena’s favorite paintings.
There will be some introductory words and a performance around 7:30 pm. Cheers! Carl Kruse Berlin Chair, Princeton University Ivy Circle Berlin
The DANCAE dance company invites members of the Ivy Circle to its upcoming performance of “Chasing Nothing,” a new three-act ballet set to electronic music, performed by dancers of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Performances take place July 5, 7,8, 9 and 10, 2025 at Eichenstraße 4A, 12435 Berlin, Germany
About DANCAE Founded in Berlin as a collective of classically trained ballet dancers, choreographers, and multidisciplinary artists, DANCÆ is reshaping contemporary performance by merging neoclassical ballet with electronic music, immersive installations, and cutting-edge technology. Their in-house ensemble, Ballet Sur_real, exemplifies this hybrid vision: a platform for cross‑disciplinary collaboration with DJs, visual artists, fashion designers, and spatial sound engineers.
Premiering July 5, 2025, at Eichenstraße 4A in Berlin, Chasing Nothing unfolds over three acts. It is set within a kinetic foil‑based installation by Dominic Kießling, whose subtle, air‑driven sculptures mirror dancers’ transient forms. This visual dialogue underscores the theme of ephemerality and human desire.
DANCÆ stands at the forefront of Berlin’s avant‑garde dance scene, rooted in ballet tradition yet boldly experimental. With a roster of internationally trained dancers, celebrated choreographers, and alliances with leading composers, technologists, and visual artists, their work transcends performance—it’s an immersive artistic ecosystem. Chasing Nothing continues this trajectory, offering Berlin audiences a rich sensory encounter that probes the nature of desire, memory, and impermanence through movement, sound, and space.
Friend of the Ivy Circle, artist Maria Nitulescu, invites everyone to her solo exhibition: “At the Crossroads of Memory” taking place at the Till Richter Museum, Schloss Buggenhagen, Buggenhagen (near Usedom), Germany.
Spanning several rooms, the exhibition explores the connection between scent, memory, and material.
Central to the installation is the scent of hay from Romania, triggering involuntary memories that evoke both personal and collective histories.
The works draw on the artist’s own experiences, the particular smell of Transylvanian hay (shaped by its rich variety of plants), and the traditions of her native Romania. Using scent, fabric from her maternal grandmother’s dowry, plaster, and glass, she creates an immersive environment that invites visitors to experience memory as a sensory journey.
