Exhibition program 2026

The Georg Kolbe Museum has been named Museum of the Year 2025 by AICA Germany. In its statement, AICA declared that the museum succeeds in creating a place that, at a small-scale, serves as a model for fostering concentration, self-reflection, and critical engagement in the exploration of its own collection, institutional history, and contemporary art. The award ceremony will take place at the museum in June.  

This year’s comprehensive program brings together exhibitions, archival research, new commissions, performances, and a series of lectures.  

Liaisons: Georg Kolbe, Herbert List, Harry Hachmeister, Jens Pecho, Maurice Béjart
Until March 8, 2026
The last photographic series depicting Georg Kolbe was created in the autumn of 1947. Photographer Herbert List took these images just a few weeks before the sculptor’s death. Liaisons explores their shared fascination with the male body and classical ideals. Contemporary artists Harry Hachmeister, Jens Pecho, and Wolfgang Tillmans expand this dialogue with aesthetic, playful, and critical reflections on masculinity. A story of friendship, intimacy, and the enduring search for form unfolds.

Creating Space: The Constructivist Marlow Moss. With Leonor Antunes, Tacita Dean, Florette Dijkstra, and Ro Robertson
April 2–July 26, 2026
In 2026, the Georg Kolbe Museum presents the first major exhibition in Germany dedicated to Marlow Moss (1889–1958), bringing an important, yet long-overlooked figure of abstract art into focus. As one of the few women active in avant-garde circles and a member of Abstraction-Création in Paris, Moss developed a radical visual language defined by geometric reliefs, rhythmic compositions, and her pioneering use of the double line. Moss emerges as a central voice of Constructivism, whose paintings, drawings, and sculptures pursued a rigorous exploration of space and light. Her compelling life story as a queer artist, marked by loss and displacement, unfolds alongside a multifaceted and pioneering body of work. Uniting Moss’s surviving sculptures for the first time—alongside paintings, drawings, photographs, films, and archival materials—the exhibition traces both her artistic vision and her remarkable life shaped by exile and loss. Contemporary artists Leonor Antunes, Tacita Dean, Florette Dijkstra, and Ro Robertson enter into dialogue with Moss’s work, creating a vivid exchange between past and present.

Curated by Dr. Lucy Howarth and Dr. Elisa Tamaschke. A bilingual catalogue (German/English) will be published by Hirmer Verlag.

everybody
August 8–November 29, 2026
The exhibition everybody seeks to rethink and further develop concepts of the body within artistic and socio-political contexts. Inspired by Olivia Laing’s book by the same name, published in 2021, the exhibition explores the body as a site of freedom and resistance. The body is situated both spatially and temporally and understood as an emotional and social object.

At its core, the exhibition poses the question: Is it possible for the body to become a neutral space—one that can be animated free from convention? What might such a future look like, and which paths could lead us there? Through their works, artists reflect on and imagine both individual and collective body politics. They create experiential spaces for radical vulnerability, connection, autonomy, and resistance. The exhibition is conceived as an open space of negotiation in which bodies are not only represented, but also felt, challenged, and celebrated.

During Berlin Art Week in September, a performance program will complement the exhibition. With Janne Kummer, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Lauryn Youden, and others.

Curated by Eva da Silva Antunes Alves.

Throughout 2026, the museum will continue its research and lecture series “From the Margins: Rediscovered Lives from Archives” with a particular highlight—Booker Prize winning writer Kiran Desai will share insights into her own family history starting in 1920s Berlin when artist Georg Kolbe introduced her grandparents to each other.

In 2026, Dr. Kathleen Reinhardt, Director of the Georg Kolbe Museum, will also curate the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with new works by Henrike Naumann and Sung Tieu. 

Events
Creating Space: The Constructivist Marlow Moss. With Leonor Antunes, Tacita Dean, Florette Dijkstra, and Ro Robertson
Press preview: April 1, 11am with pre-registration via presse@georg-kolbe-museum.de
Public opening: April 1, 6pm with free entry to the exhibitions & drinks from Café Benjamine

Press contact
Pia Roskwitalski, Press and Communications, presse@georg-kolbe-museum.de

The lecture series “From the Margins” is made possible through generous support by Wolfgang Wittrock. The Georg Kolbe Museum receives its base funding from the Senate of Berlin and is supported by the Freundeskreis Georg Kolbe Museum