MANNHEIM.- American artist Kaari Upson (1970–2021) was one of the most prominent voices of her generation. In her sculptures, installations, videos, and drawings, she questioned the boundaries of memory, identity, and social reality, transforming personal biographical experiences from her Californian homeland into universal human stories. Upson gained international attention through her participation in the 2019 Venice Biennale. Her work was also recognized early on at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, which acquired a piece for its collection in 2020. Now comes the first major museum retrospective in Germany, inviting visitors to an intense encounter with an artist whose work continues to move, disturb, and fascinate us even after her untimely death. Highlights of the exhibition include the large-format installation “Dollhouse” and works from her last series, “Foot Face,” which are being shown for the first time.
The exhibition is being realized in cooperation with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and MASI Lugano.
RADICAL. REALITIES. Nouveau Réalisme and the art of the 1960s
July 3–October 11, 2026
The Kunsthalle is dedicating the largest special exhibition in Germany in more than fifteen years to Nouveau Réalisme and its milieu. For the first time, the project draws a comprehensive, multipolar, and global cartography of the movement, with its epicenter in Paris, whose international expansion extends beyond the group initiated by Pierre Restany in 1960.
Between the postwar period and the early 1970s, a generation of artists in Europe, Latin America, and the United States focused on the potential of found objects and established a new, radical formal language through direct engagement with reality as material.
Based on outstanding works from the collection—by Arman, César, Yves Klein, Mimmo Rotella, Daniel Spoerri, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Jacques de la Villeglé—the exhibition aims to contextualize the phenomenon in its historical space and to include artists and other positions in the discourse that contributed significantly to the definition of the new languages.
DANCE!
November 13, 2026–March 7, 2027
Since the late 19th century, artists have increasingly devoted themselves to depicting the fleeting, dynamic appearance of dance. In the search for new forms of expression, the dancing body has become the starting point for immediate artistic creation. At the same time, ideas about body ideals, identity, and gender are made visible on stage and opened up for discussion. The exhibition DANCE! illuminates the complex and reciprocal relationship between dance and the visual arts over a period of more than 125 years.
Starting with Edgar Degas' dancers, the exhibition spans the arc from the international avant-garde to the present day. Works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Schlemmer, and Georg Kolbe enter into dialogue with artists such as Lavinia Schulz, Marie Laurencin, and Alexandra Exter. The exhibition also focuses on choreography as a central source of inspiration for numerous artists, including Emma Amos, Barkley L. Hendricks, and most recently Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Contemporary commissioned works by Isaac Chong Wai, created especially for the exhibition, together with works by Tino Sehgal that have not yet been shown in Germany, open up new perspectives and build a bridge to the present.
From painting and sculpture to drawing, stage costumes, and installations to video and performance, DANCE! presents a broad spectrum of artistic forms of expression and themes.
In addition, the Kunsthalle presents exhibitions on themes related to its own graphic arts collection, current positions in contemporary art at the STUDIO, and the biennial Deltabeben, which features contemporary art from the Rhine-Neckar region.
