The Museum Café is open from Monday to Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

With the financial support of many friends and sponsors, the cafeteria of the Centre for Psychosocial Medicine in the neighbouring building has been transformed into an attractive museum café. With the café, the museum and the IBA want to highlight the museum's potential in the Bergheim neighbourhood, and to promote a major structural expansion. And the new café also makes the place more attractive for patients, their relatives and hospital employees. For the time being, the café is open from Monday to Friday from 10:30 am to 2:00 pm. In order to be able to have longer opening hours in the near future, the museum is looking for a suitable operator.

Even from a distance, it is clear that something has changed here: On the lawn in front of the museum stands an iron sculpture more than three metres high, the Man Without Gravity by Josef Forster (based on a design by Karoline Becker), which was also chosen for the museum's logo. A light installation in the arcade corridors and yellow pixel-like stickers on the floor point the way to the new museum café and visually connect the café and the museum. In the former cafeteria, interior designer Fabian Friedhoff of Stuttgart-based 3-EFF raumidentitäten has created a cozy coffeehouse atmosphere with dark walls and upholstered windowsill seating niches. The bridge to the collection in the neighbouring building was created by the artist Julia Kuhl. She has graphically presented the history of the collection on the back wall of the café. So now everything is ready, and the only thing missing is a suitable operator. Thomas Röske, director of the museum: "The management of the Centre for Psychosocial Medicine is discussing with several providers to find a suitable solution as soon as possible." Suitable in this case means an operator with an inclusive concept that integrates mentally ill people. Until this is found, the café will continue to be run solely by the KSG (Klinik Service GmbH) of Heidelberg University Hospital.

Financing the Museum Café

The museum would like to thank the many sponsors and supporters. The budget for the renovation was collected in winter 2017 via a crowdfunding campaign. Fifty-three citizens and one sponsor supported the project with a total of 6,038 Euros. The IBA Heidelberg organised a design workshop and covered the planning costs of the interim café and the surrounding design. The iron sculpture in front of the museum was financed by the Hector Stiftung II Kunst gGmbH. The construction measures were supervised by the Klinik-Technik-GmbH.

Images: c Tobias Dittmer│IBA Heidelberg