Featured Events in Germany in April 2025 (July Updated)

After four decades of museum and exhibition operations, the Neue Pinakothek is undergoing fundamental refurbishment. The museum is therefore closed for several years. During this time, selected major works of 19th century painting and sculpture are exhibited in the Alte Pinakothek and in the Sammlung Schack. The selection ranges from classicism and Romanticism to the beginning of modernism. Under the title ‘From Turner to van Gogh’, the 19th century is now being relaunched in a different form. The works of the Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich, the French Impressionists and the pioneers of modernism from Édouard Manet and Claude Monet to Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh will continue to be on display. Newly exhibited are groups of works by the important Realists Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and Adolph Menzel, which could not be shown in previous years. One cabinet brings together intimate interior depictions from the Symbolist and fin de siècle eras.

The Berlinische Galerie has devoted over 1000 square metres to presenting its collection. Waiting to be discovered among the roughly 250 works on show are paintings, prints, photographs, architecture and archive materials rarely or never displayed before. Walking around this exhibition is like time travel and takes visitors through Berlin in 17 chapters: the Kaiser’s era, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi dictatorship, the new beginnings after 1945, Cold War in the divided city, and the counter-cultures and unconventional lifestyles that evolved in East and West under the shadow of the Wall. In East Berlin, an alternative art community developed from the late 1970s. In West Berlin from the late 1970s, aggressive art by the “Neue Wilden” placed the divided city back in the international limelight.

LAS Art Foundation is pleased to present Pollinator Pathmaker, a living artwork and participatory project conceived by artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. This impactful initiative in interspecies art uses algorithmic technology to generate planting schemes for gardens, computed to support the greatest diversity of pollinating insects possible. It signals a shift toward the post-anthropocentric thinking necessary to face the current climate and biodiversity crises, and toward the non-human aesthetics and experimental formats that pave the way. Ambitious and future-minded, it is exemplary of how art can act as a driver for change, and offer new perspectives on our shared planet. Growing in the forecourt of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, the LAS- commissioned garden will be the first edition outside of the UK. LAS has committed to amplifying Pollinator Pathmaker’s impact by undertaking an extensive public campaign, which calls upon local communities, hobby gardeners and activists to get involved in pollinator protection by planting their own version of the artwork – what the artist refers to as DIY Editions – via Ginsberg’s free online tool: www.pollinator.art. Responding to the alarming decline in pollinator populations in recent decades, Ginsberg has worked with horticulturalists, pollinator experts and an AI scientist to devise an algorithmic tool that designs bespoke gardens for pollinating insects. Supported by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, the LAS Edition will be customised for Continental Europe, and will feature more than 7,000 plants of 80 different varieties, planted over a 722-square-metre plot.

The International Spy Museum is proud to host this official exhibition of iconic vehicles, all used on-screen by 007 and his many allies and adversaries. While James Bond is a fictional character, he embodies the spirit of many real spies in this museum. These men and women, from around the world, were inspired by over six decades of the Bond film franchise and its enduring cultural influence. Bond In Motion is a celebration of six decades of 007 vehicles. The exhibition features 17 iconic pieces from the EON Productions Archive and the Ian Fleming Foundation. Props, models scale and clips from the films are also on show alongside cars, motorcycles, submarines, and more from the Q Branch garage.

Already 2,000 years ago, the emperors of China had portraits of loyal officials and generals made in order to display them in their palaces. This presentation features depictions of meritorious officers that the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–1795) had commissioned for their display in the hall of fame Ziguangge to demonstrate his power and legitimacy. In the 20th century they became spoils of war not one but two times. Located adjacent to the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Ziguangge is a two-storey pavilion. During the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736 – 1795), the building was a venue for military rituals and banquets and housed paintings with battle scenes of the imperial military campaigns and portraits of meritorious officers.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the Griffelkunst-Vereinigung Hamburg e.V., the Hamburger Kunsthalle will show in its Hubertus Wald Forum a broad selection of lithographs, screenprints, etchings, woodcuts, and also photographs and C-prints from the 100 years of the programme, as well as some archival documents. The association has been publishing original graphic editions since 1925, making print series by selected artists available to its members. The works are chosen not according to their formal or thematic coherence but because they provide a repre-sentative idea of the respective artist’s oeuvre based on examples of their graphic work. The Griffelkunst-Vereinigung editions typically showcase established national and international artists alongside lesser-known, often younger artists of diverse nationalities and generations as well as collaborations with printmakers. This extraordinary graphics association today counts 4,500 members throughout Germany. The Hamburger Kunsthalle has been involved from the outset and has presented many of the series in various exhibitions over the years.

While an annex was being built onto August Macke’s former home and studio in the year 2017, a newly conceived interactive, multimedia-based exhibition on the life and work of the artist was installed in the 14 small and intimate rooms distributed throughout the four stories of the house. In these original locations the exhibition relates the fascinating story of Macke's life, his family, his artistic evolution, and his involvement in the art politics of his time - against the background of the Wilhelmine Empire. Surrounded by more than 100 original artworks, numerous memorabilia, furniture, and documents related to August Macke, visitors can immerse themselves in the domestic atmosphere of an important artist family and experience the exciting era of cultural upheaval and radically new attitudes toward art at the end of the 19th century – supported by modern media and presentation technology. Great care has been taken to authentically present the former living quarters on the first floor of the home, whose structure has remained unchanged. The remaining rooms focus on various themes in connection with the life and work of the multi-talented artist and art advocate while illustrating the many different facets of his life.

DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam zeigt im Frühjahr 2025 die Ausstellung IM DIALOG – Sammlung Hasso Plattner: Kunst aus der DDR. Die zweite Sammlungspräsentation setzt auf den Dialog als Herangehensweise an die Kunst der ehemaligen DDR. IM DIALOG zeigt rund 50 Sammlungswerke von Künstler:innen wie Gudrun Brüne, Hartwig Ebersbach, Ulrich Hachulla, Rolf Händler, Bernhard Heisig, Johannes Heisig, Peter Herrmann, Ralf Kerbach, Walter Libuda, Peter Makolies, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Harald Metzkes, Stefan Plenkers, Gerhard Richter, Arno Rink, Cornelia Schleime, Willi Sitte, Gabriele Stötzer, Erika Stürmer-Alex, Werner Tübke und Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, vorwiegend aus der Zeit von 1966 bis 1992.

The sun at the beach, the scanner at the supermarket checkout or the signal in a fibre optic cable: when light encounters matter – or matter encounters light – exciting things happen!

The first institutional survey exhibition of Shu Lea Cheang (b. 1954, Tainan, Taiwan) takes the taiwanese-american artist’s first feature film Fresh Kill (1994) as a starting point, presenting the artist and filmmaker’s world-building practices and updating works from the past three decades. Cheang moved to New York City in the 1980s, where she joined the vibrant scene of independent cinema and started experimenting with video, live TV, and network technologies. Since the 1990s, her work has challenged and furthered our understanding of digital culture. Cheang anticipated the advance of alternative currencies, investigated gamified societies, and probed biotechnologies. Her works often develop over several years through different stages and media, including video, installation, performance, and various forms of cinema. The exhibition updates works and artefacts into new landscape formations extending through four gallery spaces. Trash appears as a primary theme that leads Cheang’s investigation into the entanglement of biosphere and technosphere. Each gallery is its own world in which internet-based installation and software interaction invite the audience to explore and play.

The Weight of the Invisible is a two-part exhibition dedicated to the documentary work of the filmmaker and photographer Wang Bing (b. 1967 in Xi’an, China, lives in Paris). While Wang Bing’s films are epic in their length and their historical and political scope, they are less concerned with grand events than with the small gestures and everyday acts on which the concrete form and substance of human life rests. The artist devotes a special kind of attention to the small, incidental, and marginal – one that knows that existential weight does not necessarily lie in the obvious, but rather in the in-between, in the interstitial, in the enduring, and in what accumulates.

Marking twenty years since artist, writer and performer Vaginal Davis made Berlin her home, Gropius Bau presents the first comprehensive solo exhibition of her work in Germany. In her expansive oeuvre, punk meets glamour, queer activism meets Black counter-culture and resistance meets desire. Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Produkt features large-scale installations, paintings, video and film works, zines, writing, music and performances, offering an overview of Davis’ practice and artistic collaborations. In the exhibition, the Berlin-based art collective CHEAP presents the installation Choose Mutation, with photographs by Annette Frick. Fabelhaftes Produkt invites you into the universe of Vaginal Davis, populated by literary heroines, mythical figures and real icons.

For the first time, the exhibition “Five Friends” focuses on a circle of artists who had a decisive influence on post-war art in the fields of music, dance, painting, sculpture and drawing. John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly created a special connection between the artistic genres and media through their intimate exchange.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Robert Rauschenberg, an important contemporary American artist. The Artists Foundation will present a series of exhibitions, the most special of which is the "Five Friends". The "Five Friends" exhibition focuses for the first time on Rauschenberg and his four friends and collaborators - John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly, who are artists who have had a decisive influence in the fields of music, dance, painting, sculpture and drawing after the war. Their creations transcend media, connecting and influencing each other. The exhibition will display more than 150 paintings, scores, stage props, costumes, photographs and documents, and will also host a series of dance performances and concerts to reproduce the dialogue between the works of the five artists.

YOKO ONO: DREAM TOGETHER at Neue Nationalgalerie is an exhibition featuring works from across Ono’s groundbreaking career. The exhibition invites viewers to move beyond passive observation and engage in active participation – both physically and mentally. Often beginning on an individual level, these actions evolve into broader collective efforts, demonstrating the transformative power of communal actions in working toward peace and imagining a different world. The works invite collective actions of repair, healing, cleaning, mending, wishing, imagining, and dreaming. Before entering the exhibition, visitors are invited to engage in a moment of self-reflection through Cleaning Piece (1996). Piles of local river stones are arranged, prompting visitors to reflect on their joys and sorrows. This is followed with instructions to fold paper cranes for peace, gradually filling the exhibition space. In Mend Piece (1966), visitors take part in an act of repair, piecing together broken ceramic cups and “mending with wisdom and love.” The exhibitions central installation, Play It By Trust (1966/1991), features a large chess table where up to 20 players can simultaneously engage in the nearly impossible act of playing with all white chess pieces, challenging them to “play as long as you remember where all your pieces are.”

From spring 2025, the Gropius Bau will present a comprehensive solo exhibition celebrating the groundbreaking and influential work of artist and activist Yoko Ono. Spanning seven decades of the artist’s powerful, multidisciplinary practice from the mid-1950s to now, YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND will trace the development of her innovative work and its enduring impact on contemporary culture. The exhibition brings together over 200 works including instruction pieces and scores, installations, films, music and photography, revealing a radical approach to language, art and participation that continues to speak to the present moment.

This special exhibition, presented in the staircase hall of the Neues Museum, offers a dialogue on the meaning of time, mortality and the connection between past and present. Contemporary art meets historical space, refers to ancient models and offers a modern adaptation of the classical reception of the myth of the Dioscuri, who walk eternally between death and life.

The exhibition is aimed at gamers of all ages, but also at visitors who have little experience with computer games. The fact that computer games have developed into a leading medium is no longer a daring thesis. The social and aesthetic significance of the interactive and multimedia medium can no longer be overlooked. The computer game has freed itself from its origins as a laboratory experiment and toy and has become "the" medium of digital society, somewhere between pop culture, entertainment and art. With the opening of the exhibition »The World of Games« in the fall of 1997, the ZKM was one of the first art institutions worldwide to give video game culture a permanent public platform in an art context. Since then, the ZKM has repeatedly reshaped the presentation of games in a series of different exhibitions.

Twelve highlights from its premium collection will be guests at the Berlinische Galerie from October 2022. They bring new tones to the permanent in-house exhibition, sparking a conversation with resident works. Sharing collections and jointly making them accessible to the public must become standard museum practice in the future. In this instance, the partnership was prompted by extensive conversion work at the Märkisches Museum, which is scheduled to close for four years in 2023, leaving the foundation Stadtmuseum Berlin without its principal home. To ensure that significant paintings from its collection can remain on display, the idea was born in the two houses of integrating selected works into the permanent exhibition “Art in Berlin 1880-1980”. Early modern art is a particular strength of the Stadtmuseum Berlin holdings. The paintings to be hosted at the Berlinische Galerie are by Max Beckmann, Theo von Brockhusen, Lovis Corinth, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Walter Leistikow, Max Liebermann, Edvard Munch and Lesser Ury. All of them were important figures who enriched the city’s art scene in the early 20th century.

The creation of Museum Marta inspired the Herford family entrepreneur Heiner Wemhöner to engage intensively and continuously with contemporary art. His collection, which now comprises around 1,800 works, bears witness to his very personal approach to contemporary art.

bauma 2025 is renowned as a driving force behind innovation and success in the global industry for construction machinery, building material machines, mining machines, construction vehicles, and construction equipment. Held at the prestigious Messe München in Munich every three years, bauma attracts visitors from over 200 countries and regions. As the world's leading trade fair, it presents the perfect platform for conducting business with members of the target group and exploring international markets. With its upcoming edition in 2025, bauma 2025 is poised to once again showcase cutting-edge advancements and facilitate global collaboration within the industry. From April 7th to April 13th, attendees can immerse themselves in the latest technological advancements, connect with industry experts, and gain valuable insights into the future of the construction and mining sectors. Whether you are a professional seeking to stay ahead of the curve or a company looking to expand your business globally, bauma 2025 stands as an indispensable event for anyone involved in the construction machinery and equipment industry.

The Germany Hip Hop Dance Championships 2025 will take place at the Millenium Event Center - Die Mehrzweckhalle in Braunschweig on April 12, 2025. This prestigious event will showcase the best hip hop dancers from Germany competing for the championship title. The venue, located at Madamenweg 77, 38120 Braunschweig, is known for its spacious and versatile facilities, providing the perfect setting for an exciting dance competition. Admission to the event is free, offering an opportunity for the public to experience the energy and talent of the dancers. Don't miss this chance to witness the ultimate display of hip hop dance skills at the Germany Hip Hop Dance Championships 2025 in Braunschweig.

The fascinating dialogue between science fiction and design is the subject of a new exhibition in the Vitra Schaudepot. Under the title »Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse«, over 100 objects from the museum’s collection will be staged in a futuristic display by the Argentine visual artist and designer Andrés Reisinger. Supplemented by selected works from the realms of film and literature, the show presents a range of examples from the early twentieth century to the so-called Space Age of the 1960s and ’70s, and even further to recent design objects that have been conceived exclusively for the virtual worlds of the metaverse. The literary genre of science fiction first became popular in the nineteenth century, when the sudden rise of technology during the Industrial Age inspired authors such as Mary Shelley and Jules Verne to imagine how the era’s urgent issues would play out in a future fictional world. From the outset, the genre focused on the central questions of humankind – touching on love, war and death in the context of time and space travel, or under the risks and opportunities of new technologies. With the advent of moving pictures, science fiction was soon adopted as a major cinematic theme. This is demonstrated in the exhibition by one of the seminal early works in the history of film: in A Trip to the Moon from the year 1902, the French director Georges Meliès envisioned the flight of a rocket to the moon, resulting in the archetypical science fiction movie. Over the following decades, science fiction not only experienced a quick ascent in the film industry, but also generated new forms in the literary and graphic arts, such as comics and pulp magazines that reached a global fan base with garish covers and stories penned by renowned authors like Isaac Asimov, Stanislaw Lem and H.G. Wells. What was first anticipated by science fiction started to become a reality in the 1950s: the first satellites were shot into space, aerospace technology experienced rapid advancement, and the two Cold War superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, engaged in a moon race that captivated the entire world like a suspense novel. The Space Age also found manifold expression in the realm of design. Designers such as Gae Aulenti, Eero Aarnio, Luigi Colani, Joe Colombo and Verner Panton created furnishings and living environments whose organic shapes and shiny plastic surfaces not only looked futuristic, but also reflected a fundamental rethinking of modern lifestyles. Finding inspiration in the technology of space travel, the designers of the Space Age supplied film directors with the ideal furnishings for their science fiction movies. Designer furniture surged on the silver screen: Olivier Mourgue’s Djinn seating series in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); Eero Aarnio’s Tomato Chair in Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men in Black (1997); Pierre Paulin’s Ribbon Chair in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017), to name a few. The dialogue between science fiction and design persisted into the following decades. Iconic designs continued to appear in science fiction films, such as Marc Newson’s Orgone Chair in Prometheus (2012) – along with unexpected examples like Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Argyle Chair (1897) in Blade Runner (1982). In this respect, science fiction has proven to be a multifaceted genre that also addresses controversial topics such as climate change and artificial intelligence. The new possibilities enabled by computer-aided design and 3D printing have contributed to the revival of a futuristic aesthetic, from which new classics have emerged, such as Joris Laarman’s Aluminum Gradient Chair (2013), the first 3D-printed metal chair. In light of the current space exploration efforts, there is talk of a Second Space Age. This raises questions about how the dialogue between science fiction and design is progressing today, and what it might look like in the future. Applying innovative technologies to pressing social problems and challenges is just one conceivable scenario. The other is the metaverse, which, for a new generation of young designers, appears to be evolving into what the cosmos represented in the 1960s – a new space for projections and experiments, a place for free thinking that can be filled with novel ideas and concepts. As an example of this approach, the exhibition also features works by Andrés Reisinger, currently one of the most prominent figures creating and designing for both the physical realm and the metaverse. Reisinger’s digital artworks, often featuring furniture, are marketed as NFTs and attain high attention. His perfectly staged dreamscapes give expression to the aesthetic preferences and sensibilities of a digital generation, while clearly referencing the imagery of earlier science fiction films. On display in the show are Reisinger’s Shipping Series (2021) and his Hortensia Chair (2018), the latter a playful and simultaneously futuristic object that the artist and designer initially developed as an NFT before producing it as an actual piece of furniture. The creative direction of the exhibition has also been entrusted to Andrés Reisinger.

Monstrous like Medusa, beautiful like Aphrodite, faithful like Penelope – many women from ancient mythology are known primarily as stereotypes of traditional female roles. Inspired by a surge in new readings of these myths, the Antikensammlung (Collection of Classical Antiquities) is taking a fresh look at the goddesses and heroines.

Monstrous like Medusa, beautiful like Aphrodite, faithful like Penelope – many women from ancient mythology are known primarily as stereotypes of traditional female roles. Inspired by a surge in new readings of these myths, the Antikensammlung (Collection of Classical Antiquities) is taking a fresh look at the goddesses and heroines.

Mark Bradford, with his layered forms, materials and conceptual complexity, explores the social and political structures that reify marginalized communities and vulnerable groups. As Bradford's first solo exhibition in Germany, it also marks the reopening of the historic Rick Hall of the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum. On display are 19 works he has created over the past 20 years. The exhibition will travel to the Aijulie Pacific Museum in Seoul in August this year and will be exhibited at the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland in February next year.

With the Retrospective in the Neue Nationalgalerie, a comprehensive insight into the work of Nan Goldin from 1980 to the present day is given for the first time. Her individual series of works will be shown in the form of slide shows and films in pavilions designed by Hala Wardé in the upper hall of the Neue Nationalgalerie – each of these “buildings” is conceived in relation to the respective series of works; together they form a kind of village. After the opening in Stockholm and Amsterdam, the exhibition will now be shown in Berlin and will travel to Milan and Paris.

Donkeys are one of the earliest farm animals raised by humans. This exhibition will use paintings, sculptures, pottery, papyrus and other objects collected by the Egyptian Museum and the Near Eastern Museum in Berlin to detail the use of donkeys in different fields such as agriculture, military and religion in the ancient world, and present the importance of donkeys to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia from different perspectives. People often think that donkeys are stubborn, stupid and lazy, but they don’t know that this idea is based on prejudice based on misunderstanding of donkeys’ behavior. In fact, donkeys are smart, loyal and self-reliant animals. Donkeys mainly play an important role in civilian life, but they can also be used in military scenes, taking on the responsibility of carrying food and equipment, and calming excited horses.

This showcase exhibition at the Neues Museum is dedicated to one of the first animals to be domesticated by humans: the donkey.The particular significance of this widely underestimated grey animal in the contexts of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia is presented here from a range of different perspectives, ultimately revealing one key detail: the donkey was utterly indispensable in the ancient world.