Category: Ungleichheit

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All the lonely people

This line of a song by “The Beatles” dates back to 1966. “Ah, look at all the lonely people” is a kind of puzzled outcry to reckon with the loneliness even in busy and charitable places. 60 years later in 2026 we have whole ministries in some countries to deal with loneliness. It is not a niche problem. Tackling the problem needs to go beyond raising awareness. Loneliness occurs at all stages of the life course: children, adolescents, young adult, migrants, employees, single parents, care giving people, even within couples, seniors and very old persons. It is not restricted to urban or rural areas, but changes from one to another phase in a person’s life course carry the risk to encounter loneliness. It may well be only a temporary phase before new relationships can be established or previous contacts revived. There is a role to reach out to people who might be lonely for all of us. Public policies should be scrutinised on all levels whether they manage to break barriers or raise new ones for persons to feel lonely. In Berlin, the local level in each district is taking measures to facilitate informal meeting points open to all ages and walks of life. The “Wüstenrot foundation” sponsors many initiatives where public policies are short of funds. Projects enhance networks of people and organisations eager to assist “all these lonely people”, wherever they all come from.  (Image: Conference on loneliness at Berlin city hall Schöneberg 2026)

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The next big challenge in medicine and public health seems to be the multiple long-term conditions. Many people do not suffer from just one medical condition, but several ones at the same time. Diabetes is one such condition which frequently comes along in combination with other conditions. The definition of Multiple long-term conditions comprises 2 and more conditions like cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory or cancer, to name just a few of the more common ones. Our health and care systems are little prepared for adequate treatments as this involves a coordinated intervention and poly-pharmaceutical therapy. Changes in a single condition have repercussions in the condition and treatment. This makes adequate treatment a resourceful process with limited knowledge about the multiple interactions and intervening parameters. Add, for example, depression to any of the above mentioned conditions and the behavioral assumptions of correctly taking prescribed medication becomes a major issue for patients. The challenge for aging societies and societies with more people suffering from early onset of obesity and diabetes increases in the coming decades. There are several teams that address these challenges in research which gives hope to all those suffering already from Multiple long-term conditions.

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Climateflation

Central banks have started to deal with the impact of climate change or inflation, short “climateflation”. New and additional inflationary pressures originate in climate change and global warming and they necessitate a closer scrutiny. Heat waves, like 2026-6 in Europe, or earlier ones have created an upward pressure on prices. Loss of agricultural production can be severe due to weather extremes which occur more often and with greater intensity. Such extended hot and dry climates reduce the production of crops and spikes in prices that only reluctantly return to average levels shall cause price inflation (climateflation). These are the short term impacts.
The medium run impacts alter price relations and valuations of in sectors like housing and infrastructure. Badly isolated stocks of housing, schools or hospitals depreciate valuations and the heavy investments needed for isolation of roofs, walls and widows as well as heat pumps to produce cooling shall be in very high demand, which makes price increases more likely across the construction sector. As we expect new devices to be “AI-intelligent”, “mem-flation” will be pushed up as well. These factors can give a push to some economies which are producers of the products in high demand and able to expand production rapidly as well. Just importing higher numbers of air-conditioning systems from other countries shall worsen trade balances.
The major challenge, however, remains our inaction to stop global warming to avoid additional economic and human losses related to climateflation.

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Gone Gliding

The seaside resorts offer additional experiences to people beyond swimming. Gliding on the water or in waves is an affordable exercise for everyone. It  just needs a small board and off you go. Falls are a usual part of the exercise. Beware of them if you have any prior conditions. For the 50+ generations some regular prior falling exercises are a must. Youth has the advantage of sufficient power per kg of body weight to afford repeated falls. Water and sand soften the falls. The gliding experience, however, is a great compensation for the risks taken. Not for everyone, but early experiences in or beyond schools give pupils a head start on how to balance out yourself in specific situations. Spectators and the experience to be under observation might influence your performance for the better or worse. Balance is a rather complex experience combining body and mind coordination for all ages. 

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Gardening culture

There is a specific set of skills attached to gardening culture. You do not have to travel continents to experience the pleasure of gardening from more than just your own culture. Beyond the tradition of the French garden “à la Le Nôtre”, the English garden including the short precisely trimmed lawn and blooming arrangements, the Japanese gardens have a wholistic approach, which pay attention to broader human experiences of nature. A garden is a kind of sanctuary. It resembles more an internal journey rather than a showing off to others. Walls serve to enhance privacy to be able to open-up again later to others rather than a symbol of distinction and exclusion from the less privileged. Small places suffice to give room to a Bonsai experience. The very busy seaside resorts and port of Ostend on the Belgian coast has reserved a small spot for inner peace in its Japanese garden. (Image: Japanese garden “Shin Kai Tei” in Ostend created by Takahashi Sawano) 

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Autonomy in swarm

Swarm behavior is a fascinating research area. Almost all scientific disciplines feature some interest and publication in this area. The biological origins have been associated a lot with the marvelous behavior and patterns formed by fish moving about in swarms. Some species of birds show similar patterns of collective and somehow coordinated swarm movement. It appears to be tricky to safeguard some form of autonomy in the overriding mass behavior and mass movement.
Recent advances in this field by Li, Li & Zhao (2023) model such behavior within a predator-prey framework to explain the evolution of overall swarm behavior. Whereas “prey” strategies consist in “flocking” and “swirling” to irritate predator(s), the predators make use of “dispersion”, “confusion” as well as “marginal predation tactics”. Additionally, several assumptions go into the modeling of swarm behavioral evolution: agent observation, agent dynamics, and the environment. The mixed cooperative-competitive multi-agent setting applies reinforcement learning, additionally. The framework of evolution has 5 driving forces: (1) homogeneity of a swarm (parameter sharing); (2) actor with decentralized critic network; (3) replay buffer to enhance learning; (4) rewards for predator and loss for prey; (5) learning algorithm.
The modeling approach reveals the impact of an agent-critic network (potential of autonomous behavior) for protection of a swarm in a predator-prey scenario. (Image: fish in fish bowl 2024)

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Autonomy in literature

As we might imagine, autonomy has been and is a huge topic in literature. From the foundations of democracy to the autonomous state building, historical accounts are full of treaties on autonomy. Literature has taken similar steps by asking can we really be autonomous in our decision-making as we are social beings embedded into varieties of Throne, families and networks. There are ever larger parts that we are conscious about, but the realm of unconsciousness or sleep remains substantial. Maybe in literature, the author Samuel Beckett has gone furthest in dealing with human autonomy in his writings. The search for autonomous action might lead to far-reaching inactivity in “Waiting for Godot”.
However, Beckett’s view about autonomy can also be interpreted as a continuous battle of mankind as demonstrated in the often cited expression by Beckett (“Worstward Ho”, 1983, p.7) “All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Our strive for autonomy remains a lifelong struggle. The path to more autonomy is not linear over the life course. In fact, much evidence from gerontologists suggests that it might follow an inverse U-shape, being low at birth and low before death. Literature has guided us in such questions just as much as religious, philosophical, legal and social concerns enter into the underlying concept of autonomy and autonomous decision-making across the life course.

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China Job Quality

In a small study of 771 Chinese adults, Dong, Wu, Ni & Lu (2021) have reported on the impact of long working hours on job satisfaction. If you work few hours, job satisfaction increases as you work more hours. However, working many hours already, additional work, 40+ per week, does no longer increase work satisfaction in China. In order to preserve the recommended or communist work ethos of a “996 work schedule” (from 9 a.m to 9 p.m, 6 days a week) the authors recommend that managers support more autonomy for workers to fix their schedules as this could increase their job satisfaction. Autonomy to schedule your work and more autonomy in decision-making moderate the impact of long work hours on job satisfaction. Eventually the Chinese comrades might get satisfaction in other areas but work as well.
(Book Exhibits on Karl Marx, Museum Trier Germany Books 2023)

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Job Quality Insights

In the U.S. the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research conducts a major empirical study on job quality (Houseman et al. 2025 1st wave 18.000 respondents). The documentation and the full set of questions (Link) cover 5 dimensions of job quality: compensation and job security; work structure and autonomy; work environment; worker agency and voice; growth and development. The special merit of the survey is that it makes great efforts to cover also new forms of (precarious) self-employment (Abraham et al. 2026). The degree to which can you make autonomous decisions is of relevance to the self-employed as well as it is a part of the job quality of dependent employees in small, large or big firms.
Related to the use of AI for work purposes question 31 asks for the influence on the decision to use new technologies in your job. This is the modern version of a question, whether you have influence on how you do your job. Bullying in a job may come from supervisors, colleagues or customers and respondents report on this. Beyond the answers given for “your main job”, it is noteworthy that the inclusion of questions on a secondary job allow to identify with more precision the precarious forms of how people try to manage to make a decent living in the U.S.A.
(Image: Exhibition Fashion Council Berlin at New National Gallery 2026)

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Waterfront Paris

Most people enjoy the banks of the river “La Seine” in Paris. Ever since the Olympics in Paris 2024, the temptation to go swimming there or to do some other kind of water related activities, is high. Fewer people are aware of an other splendid location near the Gare de l’Est. The canal Saint Martin and the nearby end of the Canal de l’Ourcq ( image below) have much to offer for stressed people to take some time off and relax. From cinemas, cafés and bars you can choose your favorite to pass time with friends or family, alternatively just keep walking for miles to get your exercise as needed to sustain your body in good health and shape. The health impact of such cool and more humid areas has a high value to the benefit of all without forcing people to travel long distances for recreational activities or normalizing weight or heart rates. 

 

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Dry January

There is a health trend to pass a sober, “dry January” after the X-mas and New Year festivities. It seems to be rather popular, so that the French wineries have started a marketing campaign of a “French January“. We shall see what the battle of marketing campaigns means in the end for the health of our liver (Study Link). It might lead to changes in consumer behavior of the following kind. Take advantage of good price offers for French wine and champagne in January and drink it as of February.
For addicts of the “carneval season” this should not be too difficult, jointly with a couple of friends. Alternatively, you might not be bothered and continue a moderate consumption across seasons. Moderate consumption, however, is the tricky part of alcohol consumption. Medical guidelines (health of liver) have evolved recently to count each drop of alcohol into your total consumption in either fluid litres of pure alcohol or the equivalent measured in grams. 

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Latent social structure

In empirical approaches to sociology we occasionally apply “latent variables analyses”. The aim is to uncover links between data that are not obvious in standard analyses of data. We are pretty convinced by evidence that age correlates with the probability of death. However, most tragedies are created around exceptional counter examples to this “rational expectation”. We also somehow have an intuition about the positive effect of social networks or the social fabric in a more general sense on living and survival. In some of those latent variable models we find evidence for an underlying factor without being able to properly name or frame it. Hence, as social scientists we continue to be interested in ways to make latent social structures more visible. With such an approach in mind I visited the exhibition by author and photographer “John Kolya Reichart” in the “Schöneberg Museum” entitled “Die Kette” (The Chain, 2026-5). The start of the chain is a familiar person in your neighborhood who leads you to the next person and so on. It is explicitly a non-random procedure, which complements proceedings of strictly random sample selection of survey methodologies. The sources for bias outcomes are multiple, however, an underlying or latent social fabric of a friendship and support mechanisms can be shown. Besides the b/w portraits and audios, giving a justification for the choice, the documentation of the process of production gives more insights into the risks and potentials of this form of insights into latent social structures.
(Image: Schoeneberg Museum, “Die Kette” by John Kolya Reichart)

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Mem-flation

A recent addition to the repertoire of inflationary pressures is inflation due to real or supposed shortages of computer memory and microchips. Contrary to other forms of inflation which are induced by supply shortages (like fossil fuels) mem-flation is due to heavy actual and even more proposed investments in data centers, server farms, cloud storage and AI-driven computing capacities. Quantities and quality of microprocessors, which are essential parts in all these devices, might not be able to follow this demand-driven inflationary tendency. The hype around AI, therefore, is a major element in this likely overshooting market reaction. The current market trend is likely to last for another year as the already announced investments of the big data companies have been announced including 2027. The producers of NVIDIA, Samsung, TSMC, SK Hynix, Micron, ST Microelectronics, Infineon, Intel and AMD have realized huge profits from this demand-driven mem-flation.

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Psych-inflation

The economic narrative and measurement of inflation is incomplete without the proper account of the psychology of the price building process and mechanisms. After the 2 previous oil-crises of 1973 and 1979, the panic about not having enough oil and derivatives within the coming months, has lead to prices increases almost instantly. Despite the fact that there is enough oil floating on ships and in pipelines for 3-6 months, depending on estimates, the psychological effect of being eventually short of oil creates “Psych-inflation”. Oil markets use the “Angst of disruption” to make additional profits on people and enterprises’ hoarding behavior. There are powerful interests to exploit such potential shortages as it is a suitable time to reap some extra profits, particularly for those who knew early about a likely military conflict.

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Random randomness

In textbooks or courses of statistics, just as ordinary experiences with throwing a dice, we assume the perfect dice. This means the dice is assumed to have equal probabilities to roll on each side. Further, each throw of the dice of a sequence has an independent equal chance for each number to come up. To determine a “fair” dice we would throw the dice a thousand times to check, whether the probability of each side is about equal. However, the world of dices is not perfect and temporary or persistent margins of deviation are part of the real world. The weekly lotteries demonstrate this over and over again. Playing around with different shapes of dices makes the issue of probability tangible. Well worth to explore further empirically as well as a topic for inspiration of new approaches to learning about statistics. (Image: Dices produced by “devinsdice” Berlin 2026-5-5)

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Given then Chosen

Family is first given and only later in life family becomes a matter of choice. This is a rather sequential perspective on family matters. A lot of ethnological as well as sociological research shows that the shadow of the given family can reach long into an individual’s later life. It is essential to be or become aware of the mutability of what constitutes a family. The ethnological variability across the globe of the norms and legislation that govern families is amazingly broad. The interference of religious beliefs and practices have always attempted to gain access to the nucleus of family life as an attempt to influence the “given part” of family.
It is a much more complex issue to understand and research the “chosen part” of partnership trajectories in a broader sense and from a life course perspective (Fasang et al. 2024). The social background and upbringing in a broad sense have a lasting impact on most people. However, there are enormous degrees of freedom to later on choose your friends, family or families. Societies across continents have chosen and invented particular rites of transitions between families and how to bridge networks. It is amazing that we tend to devote so little thought to this nucleus of our societies. 

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Pictures at an exhibition

The playlist on Spotify, which accompanies the exhibition “Unforgettable” in Ghent, is an interesting extension of the unforgettable artists into today and tomorrow. You may be inclined to share your opinion in the way Maria Iskariot does it in “Dat find ik lekker” or more like Sophie Straat in “Dansen met de dood”. Anyway, women artists are coming front stage and this is great news despite all the backlashes we, unfortunately, witness in the 2020s. The curator of the playlist Murielle Scherre has managed to take us, a bit like the exuberant Modest Mussorgsky in his “Pictures at an exhibition”, beyond the marvelous exhibition rooms to a broad exploration of contemporary women artists’ world of imagination in music, visuals and songs. A great intergenerational accomplishment. 

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Forgotten but Unforgettable

Many women painters and artists who worked during the 17th and first half of the 18th century have been forgotten until recently. The galleries of the time and many years later gave little attention to the women artists of that time. Most of them were relegated to be of minor importance in the course of art history. The exhibition of the Museum of the Fine Arts Ghent in Belgium has accomplished to rectify this place of women painters in art history. The fine pieces of art, ranging from painting to sculptures, were frequently signed by men, probably to achieve higher market values and become visible in the public sphere at all at their time.
The exhibition is a kind of a revelation of how difficult it was for women to move from an “object of art” to be the subject painting including painting themselves. This also dealt with the view or regard of others towards women. Additionally, the exhibition features a section on “Social Expectations”, which deals with the expectations of the Flemish and Dutch societies towards women. Family values, marriage, wealth and social status were of utmost importance.
These women painters were forgotten far too long, but have staged their comeback as “Unforgettable” in the 21st century.
(Image: “Pictura at an exhibition” taken in the MSK Ghent 2026-4)

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Jobs First

The Berlin demonstration of the 1st of May has chosen to put „Jobs First“. Jobs before profits is a widely accepted claim by trade unions to highlight the importance of work in our societies. Particularly in times of robots and AI taking jobs away, this motto is well chosen as a principal risk in 2026. The current technological innovations seem to aim primarily at the maximization of profits for companies rather than the benefits for society as a whole.  The Berlin parade on the 1st of May managed to achieve a great mobilization, which is a great success for the labor movement and a demonstration of power and solidarity when in many countries basic employment rights and even the 1st of May as a social tradition is attacked.

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AI data Input

If you ever wondered where the information from AI and AI chatbots comes from, you will not be surprised that this webpage schoemann.org is regularly solicited for such purposes. The number of crawlers, that do so, is quite large. The ability to trace what exactly they are harvesting on your website, is quite a tricky issue. At least a basic awareness of how the internet has been transformed in the last few years becomes evident through the comparison of unique visits, many through search engines like Google search or others, with the amount of contacts by AI-associated crawlers (see slide from own webpage below).
During he last month up to 2026-4-27 there were about 75.000 contacts, compared to 93.000 during the previous month.
At first sight, AI chatbots have largely outnumbered the “personal visits” of my webpage (see evaluate web analytics). On the other hand, I have no information of how many visits are, (at least potentially) re-directed hints from AI chatbots to my content.
In terms of “traffic” for a webpage, the information of how the AI-driven or AI-assisted search operates with other persons’ contributions will be the challenge of the coming years. If AI chatbots had to pay 10 cents per visit, I would have a comfortable pay every month from this content use. The issue of AI paying for access to reliable and high quality content has to be dealt with sooner rather than later. You may prompt a chatbot on this issue.
Meanwhile: My New Book on AI is out Now 2026-4-28:
“AI and Social Science: Potentials versus Limitations” by Dr. Klaus Schoemann, online reading and free download (here) before implementation of Paywall later on.

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Electricity generation

On a global scale, electricity generation based on wind and solar has been growing quite fast since the year 2010-2024. Wind and solar have outpaced nuclear energy production as well as the stagnant sector of water based energy production. The Global Electricity Review by EMBER provides the statistical evidence for this evolution in 2025.
The interesting evolution arises mainly because countries with a lower level of GDP have invested heavily in solar and wind energy as this form of decentralized energy production does not need heavy investments in network infrastructure. Countries with larger population growth can keep up with electricity generation according to local needs. Local production and consumption become a key in strategies of local development. The finding that households in low-income countries use on average only 1 kWh per day is an amount that 2 small solar panels can already cater for (example image below).
Countries next to the equator have relatively constant days of 12 hours daylight across a whole year. The feasibility of no-carbon sustainable energy production is driving global growth in this sector.

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Dementia Prevention

The United Nations reports on countries’ activities like dementia prevention plans. Focus is on the medical sociological analysis in which dementia is not only determined by a person’s individual life course, but it is also a society-level issue. Looking at dementia prevalence and incidence over time as well as major known risk factors, Mukadam et al. (2024) conclude that low education level, smoking, obesity, hypertension and diabetes all contribute substantially to the risk of dementia. The trick with education is simple. If you start on a dementia trajectory from a high level of education, it will take longer until you are fully dependent on other persons. For the other causes there intrinsic or genetic components, but a large share of dementia risks can be reduced through behavioral changes early in life. My all time and all ages favorite is walk whenever and as long as you can.

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Urban rural voters

On Sunday 2026-3-22 local elections of the 2nd round took place in France and some parts and cities in Bavaria. The voters have in both instances confirmed the hypothesis that voters have very different preferences for political parties along the cleavage of urban versus rural voters. The sociological issue consists in the different socioeconomic as well as educational backgrounds of the populations. Across the 2 countries inner cities have environmental issues, safe transport and rents as major concerns. In rural areas a feeling of being disconnected and left behind is frequently the predominant concern, often in terms of lacking transportation infrastructure. Voters on the local level have a more direct connection to their elected politicians and scrutinize implementation as well as promises more closely. This is a much more complex issue for voters on the national level as more topics enter the equation. The political agenda, therefore, differs substantially for urban and rural voters. This is a tough challenge for the nationwide campaign teams to test the validity of their agenda locally as well. 

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Trust or not to trust

… that is the question. The social science research on trust, distrust or corruption is expanding rapidly. As in some other fields of research the increase in research itself becomes an issue of trust in science as the uncontrolled use of AI has produced an inflation of pseudo-scientific papers as well (Link). However, the finding by Spadaro et al. (2020) that interpersonal trust (trusting beliefs and behavior) is influenced by a general feeling of security as well as trust in institutions is supported by experimental and interview-based research.
There are still many challenges to the research in this field. The “feeling of security” has an overall component, but also several subcategories like the objective or subjective feeling of job security, which is dependent on national and collective systems of employment protection legislation. Economic security or security of a sufficient retirement income might be at times considered more important than (in-)security in cities or the countryside. Differences of the mechanisms by gender and age have to be studied in detail as well, which necessitates large data collections on the issues. Churches that used to be considered as trustworthy institutions or the police forces have been accused of abuses of the high trust placed in them in the last few years. These 2 examples demonstrate that trust itself is a dynamic issue with ups and downs over time, rarely constant over time. Game theoretical considerations add further to the view that trust might be used as a strategy just like economic power. (Image: Cathedrale de Meaux) 

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Holistic public health

Based on case study in Queensland Australia, Boocock et al. (2026) propose the wider application of holistic public health laws. Due to effects of global warming the local burden of disease may rise due to larger scale floods and subsequent growth of for example mosquito populations that transmit infectious diseases. It will be necessary for societies to understand the processes behind the growth of mosquito populations and what can be done to prevent and protect oneself from the consequences. This is not only an environmental issue, but also an issue of continuous learning across all strata of society. Neighborhoods tend to suffer the same impact of chemicals used or the spreading of diseases like Dengue or malaria. The case study makes a convincing argument about the intrinsic relationship between the social and environmental processes at work. 

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Rule and divide leadership

We have known the leadership style, which has been coined as “rule and divide”, at least since the Roman imperial period.  In conquered countries it was a strategy to rule by way of creating divides between peoples or regions within a conquered country. The struggle for power within a country is likely to avoid that a powerful opposition to the occupant can build up. What is well researched in the history of international politics, has also been applied to the realm of management strategies. Anthony Galluzzo demonstrates that the strategies of management often attempt to split the workforce in at least 2 different camps in order to better keep employees and their trade unions under some sort of control. For society as a whole, so-called dual labor market theories have hypothesized the existence of such management strategies since the 1980s. With the labor practices in food and grocery deliveries as well as in taxi services such management strategies are applied again. “Old wine in new bottles”, but still seems to sell and catch on. (Image: extract from Butler Charles, 1637, Monarchia faeminina)

 

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Time and power

Who commands our time? Who commands your time? Both macro- and micro-level analyses of power relationships related to time need to be investigated. Time policies are most obvious when it comes to regulations of working time, permissions of business hours or so-called bank holidays. On the micro or individual level, it is often the question of who spends more time on work, care and repair. Hourly wage rates have been claimed by economists to guide or decide societal time spent on one or the other activity. An extension of this rationale with an overriding objective of happiness might considerably change the impact of power relationships on time. Longer time perspectives on health shall also shift the view of how power impacts the time spent on various activities. Time sovereignty is a precious value in its own right.
The power play between employers and employees keeps shifting the balance, albeit the overall trend over the last 100 years has been towards a reduction of working time and increased time sovereignty of employees as a form of democratization of working life. This constitutes one form to share the benefits of productivity gains over decades as well. (Image clock on Berlin City Council building on labor day 2025).

 

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Multilateral world

In the relatively brave new world of 21st century, it is not only a question of how the super powers like the USA, China and Russia shall push their strategic goals, but also what role so-called „Middle Powers“ will play. Europe and the European Union will have to make up their minds, whether they want to belong to one or the group, individually or jointly. New as well as shifting alliances seem to be a realistic scenario. Coalitions of middle powers will be effective counterparts to the threat of domination by a single or joint brutal force of superpowers. The power of interference of middle powers in the confrontation of superpowers is considerably higher if they were to collaborate more effectively than with each of the superpowers previously in a simple 2 opponents game of chess, much more familiar to us so far. (Image: Game of chess with 4, 5 or 6 players on the same board, here adapted from chessboard for 4 players, source: greenchess.net webpage)

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Democracy in art

The depiction and imagery about democracy in the history of art is according to my own anecdotal evidence and visits across Europe much less frequent than depictions of royalty, mystery like religion or autocratic rulers. Therefore, visits of museums on art history, let us say prior to the impressionists, have to be approached with an obvious skepticism. The impressionist art movement rebelled against the official art academy and started their own salon and are still much acclaimed for this as well as the fight for their own vision of art. The worst authoritarian backlash came from the Nazi-terror, which annihilated large parts of democratic ideas in and about art. A second major issue is about who visits the museums in contemporary societies. Democratizing the crowd who visits art museums is a steep task. Ease of access also beyond  costs of entry, they still pose barriers of access to reach a representative sample of a population to participate in art. (Image Kunstforum new barn in construction).

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Art and fashion

There is fashionable art and arty-ish fashion. The links between art and fashion are manifold and new explorations of the link are always an interesting variation of the original theme. The Berlin “Gemäldegalerie“ has added a contemporary perspective in connection with Berlin fashion week 2026 to the already rich collection on the topic. The exhibition confronts the craft of the world of fashion represented by the dresses on actual display with photographs of those dressed worn by models against the backdrop of the historic inspiration. Add sound and video to this format and you will be close to total immersion into the world of art and fashion yourself. Art and fashion may be a part of all us, not only the privileged few in society. It is most of all a question of crafts related to art, design and fashion, which dominates the creative process. A strong message from all involved in the project to the visitors.