Exhibition program 2026

The Way We Are
February 21, 2026–January 30, 2028

The collection exhibition The Way We Are is presenting itself in an altered form: new works, new collections, new thematic areas. Alongside these, familiar elements appear with modified emphases, tried-and-tested features as moments of recognition, participatory stations for visitors, and an enhancement of positions from the 1960s to the 1980s serving as a historical backbone. The underlying question: Who are we and who could we become?

A new thematic space is devoted, for example, to the self-portrait—from passport photos past classical portraits all the way to forms of self-discovery oscillating between intimacy and staged presentation. Elsewhere, the focus is on power and empowerment, thereby raising the question of how artists reveal and challenge social hierarchies visible. Additional perspectives address patriarchal structures within the cultural field as well as the diverse representations of the body shaped by attribution, self-assertion, and transformation.

With works by more than 100 artists and artist groups from various eras, The Way We Are opens up a wide spectrum of perspectives onto contemporary art from the 1960s to the present. Renowned names are challenged by (still) less known positions; points of view inherent to traditional art history are brushed against the grain. The inquiry reveals surprising, interesting, humorous, poetical, or radical possibilities for approaching the central issues of our era by means of art.

Anys Reimann: Mirrorball 
May 2–October 4, 2026 

With Mirrorball, the Weserburg is the first museum to present a solo exhibition devoted to Anys Reimann (b. 1965 in Düsseldorf). The artist investigates the dynamic field between identity and body, between cultural affiliation and representation. She is known for images of Black women: self-confident, complex, and challenging all at once. Reimann counters perspectives of Western colonialism with idiosyncratic pictorial worlds. Her works celebrate the hybrid and ambiguous. In their creation, the artist connects fragments from art history, film, music, fashion, and literature into a vibrant, contemporary mythology. Everywhere to be found are icons and outsiders, queer visual languages, and an oppositional Black pop culture. 

The exhibition in Bremen offers a comprehensive range of insights into Reimann’s most recent creative output: large-format collage-paintings; mysterious sculptures made of leather; objects with platform shoes; or bodily impressions with clenched fists. Several new works were developed expressly for Mirrorball, including a black garden in the museum as an accessible installation with plants that, without exception, all have black blossoms, a sensual, almost unreal biotope, enriched with a site-specific olfactory composition.

Edition S Press
Exhibition at the Centre for Artists’ Publications
September 12, 2026–August 29, 2027

“Poems that one has to hear”: the Edition S Press was a publisher of experimental literature, Concrete Poetry, Beat Poetry, and Poetry Performance; from 1970 to 2005, it focused on acoustic art. By issuing audio tapes, audio cassettes, video cassettes, and media packages, it opened up new pathways for the dissemination of artists’ publications.

Particular focuses of attention are on series of works by artists from Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Most of them arose in the era of the Cold War, when there was an ongoing confrontation between the great powers and war was in the air. As if beneath a magnifying glass, the story of this publishing enterprise recounts a history of resistance and of subversive strategies realized in poetical and radical acoustic works. The exhibition formulates this narrative in works by more than fifty artists, including John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno, Eugen Gomringer, Raoul Hausmann, Ernst Jandl, Friederike Mayröcker, Andrej Monastyrski, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Meret Oppenheim, Dmitri A. Prigov, Lev Rubinstein, Patti Smith, and Anne Waldman.

Poul & Aase Gernes: Better Together!
November 14, 2026–11 April, 2027

The art of Poul Gernes (1925–1996) enjoys a cult status in Denmark. What is almost unknown, however, is the fact that his most important works were created in collaboration with his wife, the painter and textile artist Aase Seidler Gernes (1927–2018). Better Together! endeavors to rewrite art history by presenting the Gernes' work for the first time as a collaborative practice, encompassing their joint projects and interdisciplinary collaborations alongside their individual works.

Their collectivist concept of art directs its central focus towards humankind and situates itself in opposition to the traditional, elitist notion of an artistic genius. The art of Poul & Aase Gernes is intended to address as many people as possible and to inject a positive energy into their surroundings. Hence most of the works are characterized by brilliant colors and simple, geometric shapes. With their diverse depictions of everyday life, the artists sought to create a background against which people could develop themselves and thereby impart a meaningful shape to society. Thus, the Gernes’ approach is profoundly democratic without involving political activity in the classical sense.

The exhibition at the Weserburg extends over 800 square meters and features an abundance of wall works, drawings, paintings, design objects, films, documentary material, and life-sized reconstructions of spatial shapings. It is being realized as a collaboration with Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Sorø Art Museum, and the Aarhus University. 

Director: Janneke de Vries
Press contact: Jan Harriefeld, presse@weserburg.de / T + 49 (0) 421 5983921