Annual program 2025

Walk This Way
Until February 23, 2025

The exhibition Walk This Way extends an arc from the 1960s up to the present and focuses on works by contemporary artists in which the city is transformed into a stage and the act of walking becomes an artistic statement. Walk This Way brings together works by artists who, whether playfully or provocatively, proceed on their individual paths of exploration, reinterpretation and replacement. Public spaces have always been a site for seeing and being seen. The multifaceted architecture and the accelerated movements of passersby led to an abundance of new impressions and living environments. Artists reacted to these changes and utilized urban space as the location for their artistic inquiries as well as for expressing their social and political concerns.

Alina Szapocznikow: Körpersprachen (Body Languages)
March 15 until July 6, 2025

The Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow (1926–73) numbers among those outstanding female artists of the twentieth century who, in spite of their innovative creations, achieved international recognition only at a late date. The focus of Szapocznikow’s sculptural and graphic oeuvre is on the human body, which serves as the basis for her uncompromising thematization of the fragility of existence, the fickleness of the body, and the paradoxes of life. In her tireless investigation of unconventional sculptural practices and materials, she numbers among the extremely fascinating female artists who revolutionized the traditional concept of sculpture. Curated by Ute Stuffer (director, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg) and Prof. Dr. Ursula Ströbele. The exhibition is a collaboration with the Musée de Grenoble.

John Akomfrah: The Unfinished Conversation
July 25 to November 2, 2025

John Akomfrah’s (*1957 GH) space-encompassing film installation The Unfinished Conversation (2012) is an emotionally impactful tribute to the influential cultural theoretician and sociologist Stuart Hall (1932–2014 JAM). Hall’s undogmatic thinking about racism, class and identity has retained its pioneering status right up to the present. Akomfrah’s complex montage is animated by the conviction voiced by his mentor and friend that identity and affiliation are not static, unchangeable givens. They cannot be reduced to an ethnic origin but are instead aspects of an ongoing “uncompleted conversation.” The vividly insistent film installation of Akomfrah issues an invitation to give thought to how we view ourselves and others.

Under Pressure: Prints of Expressionism
July 25 until November 2, 2025

Expressionism is considered to be the most important movement of renewal in the German art of the twentieth century. Its artists rebelled against social structures and academic painting. They discovered the characteristics of prints to be ideal preconditions for the realization of their concept of a subjective, vehemently expressive art. Simplified forms, emphatic lines and patches of single colors came to express their new ideas about art. The Selinka Collection of the Kunstmuseum Ravensburg includes a large number of Expressionist prints which serve as the point of departure for illuminating both the importance of prints for the avant-garde movement and the various techniques for making prints. Woodcuts, etchings and lithographs provide insights into the artistic and cultural revolt of Expressionism.

Kathrin Sonntag and Gabriele Münter: Das Reisende Auge (The Travelling Eyes)
November 22, 2025 until March 22, 2026 

In the exhibition Das reisende Auge/The Travelling Eye photographs by two female artists, both born in Berlin, enter into a dialogue that spans a temporal divide of more than a century. Kathrin Sonntag (*1981) embarks upon a journey through the little-known photographic oeuvre of the Expressionist Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) and reacts to Münter’s photographs with pictures from her archive. The photos were taken in 1899/1900 during the Expressionist artist’s two-year journey through the USA. Antecedent to Münter’s painterly production, their compositional quality testifies to her search for a mode of artistic expression. Sonntag became known for her installations consisting of both her own and found pictorial material; she puts to question the essential nature of photography as well as our notion of what constitutes a picture. The exhibition is a collaboration with the Museum Marta Herford.

Gabriele Münter: Aufbruch in Form und Farbe (Arising in Form and Color)
November 22, 2025 until March 22, 2026

The monographic exhibition is dedicated to Gabriele Münter (1877–1962 D), one of the most important artists of German Expressionism and a leading voice of the European avant-garde at the beginning of the twentieth century. With items from the Selinka Collection of the Kunstmuseum Ravensburg serving as the point of departure, the focus of the exhibition is on the period from 1908 to 1914, one of the most productive phases of Münter’s creative output. Murnau in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps became the place where Münter preferred to paint, and where her capacity for simplifying form, the clear contrasts between colors, and her graphically unerring manner of painting came to full fruition. After Gabriele Münter’s oeuvre has received acclaim from international museums, this is the first solo exhibition dedicated to her during the last twenty years in Baden-Württemberg.

Kunstmuseum Ravensburg                    
Burgstraße 9, 88212 Ravensburg
T +49 (0)751 82 810 Museum
T +49 (0)751 82 812 Office
kunstmuseum@ravensburg.de

Opening times                              
Tuesday 2–6pm / Wednesday to Sunday 11am–6pm / Thursday 11am–7pm / Closed Mondays except for holidays.