The record
A Thierry Noir panel titled The Power of Creativity over Concrete, installed in 2023 and deliberately oriented east–west as it stood in Berlin.
A twelve-foot segment in a glass case beside Herter Hall, which houses the history and German and Scandinavian studies departments and the DEFA Film Library. It was unveiled on 25 April 2023, and it is set east–west to reproduce the way it stood in Germany — the same curatorial care the CIA took at Langley, and the opposite of most installations, which simply face the painted side at the visitor. The work is by Thierry Noir and is titled *The Power of Creativity over Concrete*. It is among the most recent installations in the catalogue: segments were still being placed more than thirty years after the border opened.
How did it get here?
Painted by Noir in 1990 in front of an old print factory in Treptow, in the south-east of Berlin. Bought in 2010 and given to the university by the family of the late Eric Hanson.
Sources
Listed by the Berlin Wall Archive as #9.
Berlin Wall segment unveiled — University of Massachusetts Amherst ↗
The university's own account: the 2023 unveiling, Noir's authorship and title, the Treptow origin, the Hanson donation and the east–west orientation.
Institutional sourceSource accessed 2026-09-17
UMass Amherst unveils segment of the Berlin Wall on campus — Spectrum News 1 ↗
Contemporary reporting on the installation and its placement.
Press reportSource accessed 2026-09-17
Berlin Wall Archive ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 9
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