Photo by Jochen Littkemann, courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

Georg Herold, "Deutsche Mutti" (2007)

© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2009, Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Richard Artschwager, "Exclamation Point (Chartreuse)" 2008

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Every year on the first weekend of May, Berlin celebrates its contemporary-art scene, undeniably one of the hottest, and fastest-growing, in the world. This year, participants in Gallery Weekend Berlin, the fifth, will include 38 of the city’s more than 100 gallery spaces and museums, and seven of the city’s most important private collections will open their doors as well. And, for the first time, organizers Michael Neff and Kirsten Koch have been commissioned by the galleries to produce a thick guide to help visitors find galleries in the neighborhoods of Mitte, Kreuzberg, Charlottenberg, Wedding, and Friedrichshain. All the spaces will be open open 4 to 9 p.m. on Friday, May 1, and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

Berlin-scene fixtures Arndt & Partner, Eigen + Art, and Neugerriemschneider are among the heaviest hitters on the roster, but it is the newcomers to the German capital that seem most likely to makes waves this year. In Mitte, visitors should not miss Sprüth Magers’s new gallery at Oranienburgerstrasse 18, where Richard Artschwager is on show. Philomene Magers and Monika Sprüth, grande dames of German art, have streamlined their operations down to two key locations, London and Berlin; they’ve closed their Münich gallery and retain only an office in Cologne. They opened the Berlin space last year in a handsome conversion of a 19th-century social club that also houses the affiliated film and video shop Image Movement, designed by artists Rosemarie Trockel and Thea Djordjadze.

While in Mitte, head over to Contemporary Fine Arts, showing German artists Norbert Schwontkowski and Georg Herold opposite the Museum Island; they share their David Chipperfield building at Am Kupfergraben 10 with two private contemporary-art collections — media mogul Christiane zu Salm’s About, Change Collection and that of former Hamburger Bahnhof curator Heiner Bastian — both of which will offer only limited access outside of Gallery Weekend.

Although not participating in the official program, New York’s Moeller Fine Art looks set to steal the limelight in Kreuzberg; it's opening its first German gallery just before the Gallery Weekend on April 28, in the Belle Epoque Palais Eger redesigned by architect Thomas Kröger at Templehofer Ufer 11.

Accompanying Gallery Weekend this year is the new one-day gallery event 7x2, designed to promote emerging galleries. Organized by galleries Sommer & Kohl, Lüttgenmejer, Ben Kaufmann, and Croy Nielsen, the event concentrates its activity into one day, Sunday, May 3, and one location, the Haus des Kindes (House of the Child) at Strausberger Platz 19. Designed by leading East German architect Hermann Henselmann, the 14-story space was built as an examplar of socialist architecture in 1954 and once housed a puppet theater, children’s department store, and children’s café as well as apartments. For 7x2, the space will accommodate seven local up-and-coming galleries, each of which will share one of the building’s many foyers with an invited out-of-town partner gallery. Guest galleries range from Katharina Bittel of Hamburg to Tres Cruces of Montevideo.

Meanwhile, in Southern Germany, Munich’s Kunstareal (art area), already a jewel in Bavaria’s crown, will gain a permanent attraction later this month — the new Brandhorst Museum, a city- and state-funded space built to house the contemporary-art collection of Udo and Annette Brandhorst.

Although it doesn’t open to the public until May 25, the museum has already garnered attention for its striking, colorful exterior. Architects Sauerbruch Hutton have affixed some 36,000 vertical ceramic rods in 23 bright shades to the outer sleeve of the building, with various effects. Viewed straight on, the structure’s vertical axis is emphasized, while, seen from the side, the individual rods blend into a smooth, multicolored surface. The interior, offering 33,000 square feet of space, has been designed as a restrained backdrop for the collection; in its first hang, which will remain on view for at least one year, Cy Twombly’s 12-painting "Lepanto" cycle, first seen at the Venice Biennale in 2001, has been given pride of place in a tailor-made curved gallery.