Goethe in the Skyways
Goethe Institut/Sandra Teitge/Valerie Chartrain

As part of the Year of German-American Friendship 2018/19, the Goethe Pop Up Minneapolis Goethe in the Skyways occupied a space in the city’s futuristic-looking Skyway system—an 18 km long artificial network of arcades and pedestrian bridges that was constructed in the 1960s to connect the office buildings in the city centre with one another and allow people to avoid the bitter cold of winter. Despite being used and perceived as public spaces, the Skyways are all privately owned, thus symbolizing “public” life in the USA, both within politics and business and in the realms of sport and culture. In this hybrid private-public setting, Goethe in the Skyways was used as a platform for a critical examination of cultural and political controversies in the USA and Europe. The publication documents the one-year cultural program.

Sandra Teitge is a curator, cultural researcher, and occasional writer, born and raised in East Berlin.
Valerie Chartrain is a curator, publisher and researcher focusing on art.