Exhibitions

Taylor Swift's song 'The Fate of Ophelia' is currently a global hit. It is driving teenagers, who are otherwise not interested in anything, in droves to a particular museum: the Museum Wiesbaden. It is renowned for its outstanding modern art collection. But thanks to Taylor Swift, one rather odd painting from the collection has achieved worldwide fame: Friedrich Heyser's 'Ophelia', painted around 1900 and very much in the spirit of the Wilhelminian era. The painting now has to be specially secured and is adored by Swifties thanks to the music video for the song, in which Swift steps out of a painting that looks very similar to transform herself into a showgirl. However, that's not the only reason to visit Wiesbaden. To celebrate its 200th anniversary, the museum is showcasing highlights of classical modernism in a special exhibition called 'Feininger, Münter, Modersohn-Becker...', most of which are on loan from private collectors. A real eye-catcher! Works by Willi Baumeister, Max Beckmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Erich Heckel, Adolf Hölzel, Alexej von Jawlensky, Ida Kerkovius, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke and Ernst Wilhelm Nay are included in the exhibition.

Friedrich Heyser, Ophelia, um 1900. Museum Wiesbaden, Sammlung F.W. Neess. Foto: Museum Wiesbaden / Bernd Fickert

The Berlin art scene of the 1980s is back. In the summer of 2025, the Berlinische Galerie presented a retrospective of Käthe Kruse, who was a member of the artist group and band 'Die Tödliche Doris'. The Weserburg in Bremen is set to become the first museum to present a comprehensive retrospective of the entire group. Founded in the punk movement by Wolfgang Müller and Nikolaus Utermöhlen, who were both still studying at the Berlin University of the Arts at the time, the group combined strategies from Warhol's Factory with influences from Fluxus, punk, wave, concept art, and anarchic and post-structuralist thinking. Active between 1980 and 1987, the group's membership was in constant flux, and it combined strategies from Warhol's Factory with influences from Fluxus, punk, wave, concept art, and anarchic and post-structuralist thinking. 'Doris' was not a star or a solo artist, but rather an amoeba-like network: an avant-garde meme that produced music, noise, light, strip shows, performances, films, books, gossip, furniture, paintings, object art, vinyl records, fashion, and radio plays — even an application for a seat in the Berlin Senate. The Bremen exhibition shows how groundbreaking this artistic work was, and explains why the group still has such a legendary reputation today.

Die Tödliche Doris auf dem Festival der Genialen Dilletanten, West-Berlin, 1981

On 17 November, Armin Müller-Stahl will turn 90 years old. To celebrate this milestone, the Kunsthalle Emden is presenting a major exhibition, ‘Night and Day on Earth’, dedicated to the multifaceted artist, who was born in Tilsit, East Prussia, in 1930. The exhibition explores the connections between Müller-Stahl's work as an actor and his visual art. The title is inspired by Jim Jarmusch's film 'Night on Earth' (1991), in which Müller-Stahl played a leading role. Showcasing a variety of works, the exhibition features early paintings, print cycles, and large-format allegorical and expressive paintings, as well as the most recent portraits of Jewish friends and companions.

It is complemented by interviews and documentaries that shed light on his development as an actor and painter. Müller-Stahl, an avid jazz fan and novelist, began his unique artistic career in post-war Germany. He became a prominent and celebrated film actor in the GDR, but was forced to leave the country in 1976 after signing an open letter protesting against the expulsion of Wolf Biermann from the GDR.
In the West, he became the face of German auteur cinema, working with directors such as Herbert Achternbusch, Alexander Kluge and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He also took on major roles in Hollywood films, appearing alongside Jessica Lange in Costa Gavras' political thriller Music Box (1991). In this context, 'Night and Day on Earth' offers a picturesque and deeply personal self-portrait.

Portraitfoto Armin Mueller Stahl Foto Niko Schmid Burgk ©Niko Schmid-Burgk

Gröting is a sculptor whose work encompasses not only physical materials, but also feelings, relationships, and inner worlds. She creates works that translate psychological and social relationships, as well as human and non-human history, into physical forms. She produces an ever-evolving 'lexicon' of videos and sculptures that draw our attention to absence, and to the physical and emotional gaps between humans, animals, façades, and other things. Key themes for the artist, who was born in 1961, include repressed traumas of the 20^(th) century and German history, as well as the complex relationship between civilisation and nature. She has been one of the most influential figures in contemporary German art since the 1990s. In her work, she renders the invisible visible by focusing on processes or interactions that often go unnoticed in everyday life. These may be the moulded, intimate space between two people during sexual intercourse, or the encounter between her dog and a wolf, as depicted in 'Wolf and Dog'. The Städel Museum is presenting a solo exhibition featuring eight films from 2015 to 2025. These include Gröting's latest video work, Matthias, Helge and Asta (2025), in which Matthias Brandt asks Helge Schneider and the artist the question, 'Have you failed?' We can already reveal that the answer is as astonishing and absurd as a Beckett play.

Image: 
Asta Gröting
Wolf and Dog, 2021
Videostill
4K UHD-Video, Farbe, Ton, 9:58 min
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

In the past, Edvard Munch (1863–1944) would have been considered a genius and placed among the pantheon of modern, mostly male painters. However, it is not only the renowned British artist Tracey Emin who holds Munch in high regard; she has dedicated performances, paintings, and a monumental, maternal sculpture to him in front of the Munch Museum in Oslo. His work inspires younger generations of artists who view it through a fresh lens. Consequently, it is fitting to present his work alongside that of Maria Lassnig (1919–2014), an icon of the feminist avant-garde. She is now considered a pioneer of radical body-related art movements such as Viennese Actionism and female body art. Both artists created a style of painting that was both physical and spiritual. For both artists, painting was a means of radical self-questioning. This double exhibition, titled 'Malfluss = Lebensfluss' (Painting Flow = Life Flow), will be the first time they have been shown together. It features over 180 works, including numerous major pieces, as well as rarely exhibited paintings, works on paper, films, photographs, and sculptures.

Maria Lassnig (1919–2014)
Ohne Titel (Schreiende), 1981
Bleistift, Aquarell auf Papier
627 x 438 mm
Maria Lassnig Stiftung
© Maria Lassnig Stiftung / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
Foto: Roland Krauss

Born in 1976, Duane Linklater is a renowned Omaskêko Cree artist who is currently taking the international art world by storm. Hailing from Ontario, Canada, he belongs to a younger generation of Indigenous North American artists re-examining the consequences of settler colonialism, genocide and the erasure of Indigenous culture and memory in contemporary contexts. Working with video, performance, installation and sculpture, Linklater also criticises the museum and the way it represents power, conveys history, and communicates values and knowledge. Dealing with indigenous art, spirituality and practices such as hunting and the fur trade, Linklater also reflects on the digital world, pop culture and the Western art canon. In doing so, he questions notions of folklore and traditional artistic production. He works with industrial and found materials, as well as high-tech and conceptual approaches, often collaborating with his family and other artists. 'Cache', the title of his first institutional exhibition, is reminiscent of temporary computer storage. His scaffolding sculptures, covered with tarpaulins, address the storage or preservation of data, objects and memories. These industrial modules house paintings, objects, and personal items which are not intended for immediate use, but rather for long-term storage which is inaccessible to the public.

Duane Linklater, teŝipitakan_cache_1, 2024, Installation view, cache, Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, 2024. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography, Courtesy Catriona Jeffries.

Thomas Bayrle is to German art what Kraftwerk is to music: a legend. His career has spanned 60 years. Closely linked to the history of the Deutsche Bank Collection, Bayrle anticipated the digital pixel aesthetic as early as the 1960s, and his paintings and prints have always been at the cutting edge of contemporary technology. Almost everyone is familiar with his images, in which the repetition, interconnection and interweaving of individual elements create a shimmering overall motif of cars, stars, logos, athletes or everyday objects. The structures of consumption, work, urbanity, technology, transportation, pop and mass culture, and (substitute) religion all play a central role. 'Be happy!' was a guiding principle that he often imparted to his students. For Bayrle himself, this was a philosophy of life and an artistic and political stance. It is a fitting motto for the current times.

Thomas Bayrle, Kim Kardashian XII, 2021, Pigmentdruck auf Papier, 98 x 87 cm
© Thomas Bayrle, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin, Foto:
Wolfgang Günzel

This multisensory exhibition, created by Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, bridges the gap between cinema and visual art. To mark the 25th anniversary of his legendary debut film Amores Perros (2000), Iñárritu presents previously unseen footage revisiting the timeless themes of the film. Spanning three episodes, Iñárritu depicts love, hate, dreams, and death in Mexico City, where the lives of the characters intersect fatefully through a serious car accident. These haunting outtakes, stored in the film archive of the National Autonomous University of Mexico for a quarter of a century, capture the charged socio-political reality of Mexico City that remains relevant decades later. As part of Sueño Perro, Mexican writer and journalist Juan Villoro will design a visual and acoustic installation for the first floor of the building. Sueño Perro is the third collaboration between Fondazione Prada and Iñárritu.

Image: 
Still from Amores Perros (2000) by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Courtesy Rodrigo Prieto. © Alta Vista Films.

Now aged 90, New York artist Eleanor Antin is something of a godmother to Cindy Sherman. Sherman took the art world by storm with her pioneering photography series Untitled Film Stills (1977–1980), in which she portrayed herself in stereotypical female roles from American popular culture, such as secretary, sixties-housewife, and film noir blonde. Antin, who was almost twenty years older than Sherman, had a background in conceptual art and had previously been a writer and an performer. After moving to San Diego in the early 1970s, she began integrating language, character, costume and voice into painting, sculpture and photography. She created various alter egos that appeared in her films and performances, including a disenfranchised king, two frustrated ballet dancers and a helpless nurse. Like Sherman, Antin was interested in showing how gender images are based on social hierarchies and power relations. However, she never achieved the same popularity as Sherman. This may be because her work is more poetic and playful. Alternatively, it could be since Antin was surrounded by a lively community of left-wing artists and writers in San Diego, where she taught at the university and took a more political stance on feminism. Antin is currently being re-evaluated, and this high-calibre exhibition will undoubtedly contribute to this.

Image: 
Eleanor Antin
Nurse Eleanor, R.N., 1976/2007
Courtesy the artist

The work of Turkish opera singer and painter Semiha Berksoy (1910–2004) caused a sensation at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin last spring. Berksoy studied at the Berlin Academy of Music in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, becoming famous in 1939 for her role in Richard Strauss's opera Ariadne auf Naxos. She also studied painting. However, it was not until long after she returned to Turkey that she was recognised as a visual artist. In the 1960s, she created works that increasingly focused on dreams, visions and feelings. Berksoy developed an 'expressive', completely idiosyncratic style that broke the boundaries of painting. With 'Aria of All Colors', Istanbul Modern is now presenting the most comprehensive exhibition on Semiha Berksoy in Turkey to date. The exhibition reinterprets the Berlin show, bringing together over 200 of Berksoy's works from the performing and visual arts, cinema, and literature. 'Aria of Colors' documents the unique connections Berksoy made between opera, theatre, painting, and literature. This is certainly one of the art events of the year in Istanbul.

Semiha Berksoy
Feast at the Prison, 1999
Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection

Few artists in recent decades have succeeded in capturing our attitude to life in the era of advertising, entertainment and online culture. In this era, we have the power to shape and express our identities, bodies and worlds in ways that were previously unimaginable. However, we are also becoming increasingly formless in the flow of algorithms. With astute wit, Japanese-British artist Simon Fujiwara (born 1982) explores the depths of digital turbo-capitalism, as well as moments of humanity and even joy, in his immersive video works and installations. Now, MUDAM is dedicating A Whole New World to him: an opulent, immersive mid-career retrospective inspired by the scenography and dramaturgy of amusement parks. It brings together Fujiwara's works in the form of his own 'wonder worlds'. These unfold throughout the museum, leading visitors through environments that enchant and unsettle in equal measure. Visitors will encounter Who the Bear (2020–ongoing), Fujiwara's cartoon character and amusement park mascot. 'Who' has no fixed identity — no origin, gender, sexual orientation or nationality — and is constantly searching for an image of their true self. Alongside major works such as Joanne (2016), Fabulous Beasts (2015–2016) and The Mirror Stage (2009–2013), Hope House (2017–2020) is also on display – Fujihara's breathtaking exploration of the story of Anne Frank.

Simon Fujiwara, Likeness, 2018
Ausstellungsansicht, Simon Fujiwara, Hope House,
Blaffer Art Museum in der University of Houston, Texas, 2020-21
Foto: Sean Fleming

No artist has depicted pain with such relentless intimacy as Dame Tracey Emin, perhaps only equalled by Frida Kahlo. She can be seen in the tradition of Munch and Schiele, as well as great poets, outsiders and visionaries. David Bowie, a close friend of hers, said she was like 'William Blake as a woman, written by Mike Leigh'. Emin, who is also represented in the Deutsche Bank Collection, is anything but an outsider, however. She rose to international fame in the 1990s with 'My Bed', her scandalous, Turner Prize-nominated unmade bed littered with cigarette butts and bodily fluids. Not only has Emin conquered the world as a painter, she has also survived an extremely serious bout of cancer against all odds. In the UK, she is something of a national treasure, embodying British culture from the working class to the upper class. Now she is being celebrated with a huge milestone exhibition at the Tate Modern – an event that is simply not to be missed.

Tracey Emin, The End of Love 2024. Tate © Tracey Emin

Born in 1975, Danh Vo fled Vietnam with his family to Denmark at the age of four. For more than two decades, he has been developing a visual language based on uprooting. Now living and working in Mexico City and on his Güldenhof farm north of Berlin with a community of 20 people, the artist is famous for his installation-based 'spatial choreographies', combining his own works with collected objects and pieces by other artists. The eponymous ancient Greek noun πνεῦμα Ἔλισσα, which originally meant 'breath' or 'wind', refers to the active, creative principle that structures the cosmos. In this sense, the exhibition explores human intimacy and the conditions that shape the actions, resilience, and meaning-making of the individual. Fragments of ancient sculptures, religious relics, and monumental found objects are brought together to explore how historical forces affect bodies, materials, and personal narratives.

Installation view: Danh Vo – Tropaeolum, 2023. La Bourse de Commerce, Paris. Photo: Nick Ash

'The Island', Hito Steyerl's site-specific project for the Osservatorio in Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, is a complex film installation. It intertwines different narratives, all of which are associated with the motif of flooding. The film addresses urgent issues such as current authoritarian tendencies, the use of AI, the climate crisis and political pressure on science. Shot on the Dalmatian island of Korčula, the 26-minute film is full of animations and forms the centrepiece of the exhibition, which was created especially for Milan. German actor Marc Waschke, a frequent collaborator of Steyerl's, plays a tragicomic superhero who must save the world in a Flash Gordon costume wielding a Star Wars lightsaber. The film covers topics such as archaeology, quantum physics, and fascism. “And all this on a small island in Dalmatia on the Adriatic Sea. All these elements collide in this installation, which I hope will delight children too,” says Steyerl. Different time zones also collide: a medially confused, capitalistically distorted, and technologically disruptive “fake time” and “deep time”—the time of the hidden geological space of experience, an underwater time that lies outside the artificially created spectrum of humans.

The Island” by Hito Steyerl, Osservatorio Fondazione Prada, Milan. Photo: Andrea Rossetti, Courtesy Fondazione Prada

With over 300 pieces from the archive and new collections, 'From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce & Gabbana” is a declaration of love for Italian culture, the inspiration behind the creations of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. This is the first time that the fashion house's archive has been presented in such a comprehensive manner, playfully illuminating the creative genius of its founders and the company's DNA. This is not just an exhibition, but a theatrical production with stage design by Agence Galuchat. Having premiered at Milan's Palazzo Reale, the exhibition has been redesigned in dialogue with the expanded ICA Miami location, reflecting the museum's role as a space for contemporary visual culture. As an ode to craftsmanship, it showcases the extraordinary realisation of their ideas. Visitors are guided through a series of immersive rooms that shed light on various aspects of the designers' vision. The presentation draws on art, architecture, folklore, regional topographies, craftsmanship, opera, ballet and the enduring spirit of la dolce vita.

Installation Image | From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce&Gabbana, 2025, Photo Courtesy: Dolce&Gabbana / Mark Blower

“Hayward Oubre: Structural Integrity" is the first major monographic exhibition devoted to the work of American modernist Hayward L. Oubre Jr. (1916–2006). Showcasing 52 sculptures, paintings and prints, the exhibition demonstrates the artist's influence on American art during his time working in the South, while also highlighting the pivotal contributions of Black artists and art departments at HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) to 20th-century art. Born in New Orleans in 1916, Oubre was the first student to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Dillard University. Fascinated by new technologies, the atomic age and the race for supremacy in space travel, Oubre is best known for his work with everyday materials, particularly his modernist, dynamic sculptures made from coloured wire coat hangers. Although he was primarily successful as a sculptor and graphic artist, Oubre painted throughout his career, experimenting with new materials to represent Black experiences in idiosyncratic ways.

Equilibrium
1969
Hayward L. Oubre, Jr. (American, 1916–2006)
Acrylic and acrylic resin on canvas
30 x 24 in.
Collection of Carla and Cleophus Thomas, Jr., image credit: Erin Croxton

From December, Brisbane will host Presence, a comprehensive exhibition by Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. It will feature significant new installations, photographs, and sculptures. The highly anticipated exhibition was developed by Eliasson and his studio specifically for the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). Spanning the entire ground floor of the GOMA, it comprises over 20 pieces by the artist from 1993 to the present day. The spectrum ranges from the groundbreaking work 'Beauty' (1993), in which a rainbow appears to float in a veil of fine mist, to the immersive rock landscape and small stream of 'Riverbed' (2014), to a series of never-before-seen works developed specifically for 'Presence'. These include two large new installations dealing with the polarisation of light: 'Your negotiable vulnerability seen from two perspectives' (2025) and 'Your truths' (2025). Chris Saines, director of QAGOMA, says of Eliasson's work, 'It forces us to think about how we relate to the world visually, spatially, and kinetically.'

Key Visual of the Singapore Biennale 2025. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

"Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light" honors the diverse photographic practices of more than eighty female artists who were active between 1900 and 1975. With photographs, postcards, photo books and magazines, the exhibition examines the role of female photographers and shows how they, as artists, created an image of themselves, of others and of their time.

The spectrum ranges from photographs of the women's suffrage movement at the turn of the 20th century to some of the most iconic images of the 20th century by Diane Arbus, Dora Maar and Lee Miller, to the US women's rights movement of the 1970s. From Melbourne to Tokyo, Paris to Buenos Aires, the exhibition presents works by pioneering artists such as Berenice Abbott, Claude Cahun, Imogen Cunningham, Germaine Krull, Tina Modotti, Lucia Moholy, Toyoko Tokiwa, Yamazawa Eiko and many others.

Ellen AUERBACH
R. Schottelius in New York (1953); (1992) {printed}
gelatin silver photograph
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
© Ellen Auerbach. VG Bild-Kunst/Copyright Agency