In 2026, the Universalmuseum Joanneum will celebrate its annual theme, BLOOM. Ten exhibitions across eight venues will explore the botanical and metaphorical power of the flower. Just in time for summer, three high-profile exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Graz and the Neue Galerie Graz invites visitors to rediscover the relationship between nature and culture. With the expansive exhibitions “Hybrid Pleasures – Helen Chadwick in Dialogue with Liesl Raff” and “30% Dandelion” at the Kunsthaus, as well as a media-critical solo presentation by Markus Huemer at the Neue Galerie, science, social criticism, and sensual aesthetics are ambitiously intertwined.

Astrup Fearnley Museet presents a retrospective of Beatriz González (1932–2026). Known as la maestra of Colombian art, González was one of the most important and influential Latin American artists of the 20th century. Bringing together over 150 artworks, this major exhibition, planned in close collaboration with the artist, explores González’s practice from the 1960s until her passing in January 2026.

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With LIGHT DIALOGUES, the Center for International Light Art is presenting an exhibition in 2026—its 25th anniversary year—that is entirely dedicated to the institution’s central medium: light itself. The focus is on the creative and technical means by which artists use light to create effect, atmosphere, and meaning. In cooperation with SCHAUWERK Sindelfingen, the exhibition brings together works by John M. Armleder (CH), Martin Creed (UK), Tracey Emin (UK), Dan Flavin (US), Jeppe Hein (DK), Lori Hersberger (CH), Astrid Klein (DE), Brigitte Kowanz (AT), François Morellet (FR), Maurizio Nannucci (IT), and Keith Sonnier (US), bringing them into a multifaceted dialogue.

To celebrate its tenth anniversary in Düsseldorf Flingern, the Philara Collection is delighted to present an extensive survey of the collection, opening in June 2026. The exhibition, featuring well over 100 works by more than 80 artists, will extend from the spacious main hall across all the exhibition areas of the Philara Collection.

The exhibition presents a condensed but representative selection from Gil and Anat Bronner’s collection, which today comprises over 2,000 works. The presentation is complemented by works chosen from the collection of Bronner’s parents, who were a formative influence on their son’s passion for collecting. Pieces from the collections of his children, Philip and Lara, after whom the exhibition space is named, are also represented.

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30 years ago, UNESCO declared those Bauhaus sites in Weimar to be World Heritage Sites, whose ideas had previously been suppressed and politically marginalised for decades. Since 1996, the Haus Am Horn and the main and workshop buildings of the Bauhaus University Weimar have been listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. This recognition honoured not only significant architecture, but also an intellectual legacy that has shaped modernism worldwide.

To mark the 30th anniversary of the World Heritage designation, Weimar is turning its attention to the eventful history of the Bauhaus in the city. Between new beginnings and rejection, between oblivion and rediscovery, it becomes clear just how closely the history of the Bauhaus is linked to the political and social upheavals of the 20th century.

The exhibition “Emilio Vedova – More than Movement for its Own Sake” is dedicated to the work of the Venetian Informalist artist Emilio Vedova (1919–2006) and focuses in particular on his works from the 1960s, which were created during his stay in postwar Germany.

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A forensic scientist turned photographer focuses on one of the most unassuming materials in our environment. The exhibition Seeing the World in a Grain of Sand brings together the photomicro graphic works of Matthias Burba (b. 1954), a synesthete, and an interactive video work by Max Seeger (b. 1994), revealing sand as a multifaceted visual field. Between microscopic precision, subjective perception, and media translation, the material is rendered visible both as a geological archive and as a carrier of ecological, cultural, and historical processes.

The exhibition ‘Abstract’ focuses on three key approaches within abstract art. With significant new acquisitions by Carmen Herrera, Wassily Kandinsky and Mark Rothko, the Hilti Art Foundation illustrates the development and diversity of abstraction through its own high-calibre collection.

Featuring over 50 works spanning 120 years, the exhibition at the Hilti Art Foundation illustrates three paths of abstraction: geometric construction, the detachment from the object, and the dissolution of form into spaces of colour. At the heart of the exhibition are three significant, recently acquired paintings by Herrera, Kandinsky and Rothko.

As central figures of the Danish avant-garde and the international CoBrA movement, the artist couple Carl-Henning Pedersen and Else Alfelt shaped a visual language of extraordinary freedom and independence. More than 150 exhibits from four decades trace the development of their work in the exhibition at the Kunsthalle St. Annen. Scandinavian landscape and mythology, playful expression and collective creativity form central points of reference in a body of work that moves between figuration and abstraction, innovation and tradition.

The Culture Summer 2026 at Schloss & Gut Liebenberg opens its doors once again in May with a varied programme for children, teenagers and adults. It invites visitors to experience culture, nature and history in a unique setting. From the Brandenburger Landpartie with guided tours, workshops and live music, to silent film screenings and the Fête de la Musique, right through to the creative summer holiday programme and open-air cinema in the castle grounds.

The Casa di Goethe museum in Rome is hosting a solo exhibition by conceptual artist Mischa Kuball. Through two series of works, the artist explores two significant events in the history of science: a piece created specifically for the Casa di Goethe visually contrasts the opposing views of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Isaac Newton on colour theory and the refraction of light in an open, contemporary dialogue.

With the exhibition “Helme Heine: Es war einmal …”, the Günter Grass House pays tribute to one of the most significant picture book artists of our time. His books have sold over 25 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages. His characters—such as the little dragon “Tabaluga” or the “Friends” Johnny Mauser, Franz von Hahn and Fat Waldemar—are known throughout the world. Last year, the great creator of small visual worlds passed away at his seaside home in New Zealand.

For the very first time, Alfred Ehrhardt's film work is brought into the focus of an exhibition. The photographer, documentary filmmaker and Bauhaus student made more than 60 films, an oeuvre that has until now stood in the shadow of his photographic work. Now, the Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation is putting his films centre stage and reintroduces one of the most prolific German cultural filmmakers of the 20th century, both aesthetically and historically.

A selection of 20 short and feature-length films is shown on ten screens. These include nature studies, films about art and cultural history, as well as productions from the Nazi era that have rarely been shown before. On display are Ehrhardt's so-called ‘shell films’ about snails, mussels and corals, his studies of nature as a master of form, such as the mudflat structures at Neuwerk, volcanic landscapes in Iceland and ice sculptures off Greenland, as well as films about art and artists, including works on Ernst Barlach, documenta II and African masks.

Neuhardenberg is hosting an exhibition on landscape gardens in art, featuring works from different eras in dialogue with designed nature. The star and exemplary object of the exhibition is the Neuhardenberg Landscape Park, a masterpiece of garden design by Hermann Fürst von Pückler-Muskau (1785–1871) and Peter Joseph Lenné (1789–1866). The exhibition shows the diversity of representations of landscape gardens in art from the 17th century to the present day. It displays art from different eras side by side on an equal footing, revealing surprising connections. On May 31, Nezaket Ekici (*1970), a master student of Marina Abramović, will also present her work Gehend-Sehend (Walking-Seeing), developed especially for Neuhardenberg, on the proximity of art and landscape gardens.

Alex Katz is one of the most influential artists in contemporary American art and, at almost 99 years of age, continues to develop new series of works. The focus of the Tübingen exhibition, which was developed in close collaboration with Katz, is on the artist's late work, which is being presented comprehensively in Germany for the first time in a long time. A total of 40 large-format works are on display. Fifteen works come directly from Alex Katz's studio, and some of the works have never been shown in Europe before. A look at his 70-year career shows that Alex Katz today is less detached and more directly devoted to the flow of painting, exploring the boundaries of abstraction with panoramic, gestural works.

The Intensity of Softness, cites a shared materiality, the choice by both artists, Jimmy Robert & Franz Erhard Walther, to work primarily with soft materials, such as fabric and paper. These are permeable, flexible and metamorphic materials that can hug the contours of the body yet allow movement, that seem solid but as textile materials are made up of a weave and are tied moreover to the textual.

The exhibition was curated by François Piron.

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From February 8 to August 9 2026, the Emil Schumacher Museum in Hagen, in cooperation with the Geiger Archive in Munich, is honouring the painter Rupprecht Geiger with a major solo exhibition comprising around 70 works from all phases of the artist's career.

With this comprehensive exhibition of Rupprecht Geiger's work, the Emil Schumacher Museum is dedicating itself to one of the most important representatives of colour field painting in Europe and creating an indirect encounter between the two artists, Geiger and Schumacher, who were friends, that has never been seen before. Two painters, two paths of non-representational art after 1945, which appear almost like opposite poles: on the one hand, expressive gestures, on the other, the clarity of pure colour.

For a quarter of a century, the Centre for International Light Art Unna (ZFIL) has been presenting international positions in contemporary light art. In its anniversary year 2026, the museum invites visitors to experience both its programmatic profile and current developments in light art with special exhibitions, events and a central anniversary exhibition. This opens up new perspectives on light as an artistic medium for visitors. The anniversary programme will kick off on 14 February 2026 with the opening of the interactive room installation ‘RIPPLES’ by visual artist and composer Claudia Robles-Angel. The highlight of the anniversary year will be the exhibition ‘LIGHT DIALOGUES’, which is scheduled to open on 12 June 2026.

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