The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt will be celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2026. Since its opening in 1986, it has become one of today's most prestigious exhibition venues for modern and contemporary art in Europe. The iconic postmodern Schirn building in the Frankfurt city center will be undergoing an energy-efficient renovation during its jubilee year. In the meantime, the Schirn will be presenting its program temporarily, until 2028, in the factory building of the former Dondorf printing works in Frankfurt's Bockenheim district. Save the date: The Schirn will be celebrating its milestone birthday on May 8–10 2026 with a big jubilee weekend.
The exhibition program starts in January with the first comprehensive solo exhibition by Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca (January 29–April 26, 2026) in Germany. For over a decade, the artist duo has been creating video works and installations in collaboration with cultural movements and collective practices experienced outside of the established circuits of contemporary art. At the core of the exhibition is the specially developed new production Future of Yesterday (2026) involving the hardcore scene in Germany, and in particular Straight Edge (“sXe” for short). Wagner & de Burca position these scenes in the Schirn within the context of further music movements.
From February the Schirn is presenting a major solo exhibition titled Be Happy! by the Frankfurt-based artist Thomas Bayrle (February 12–May 10, 2026). The show will feature fifty-five works, in particular from the last twenty years, including painting, graphic art, sculpture, object art, sound installations, and also a video piece.
The major summer exhibition The World through AI (June 11–September 20, 2026) is showing artworks from the last ten years that explore the cognitive, psychological, political, and ecological dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI). The wide-ranging themed exhibition will occupy both exhibition spaces at the Schirn with around forty works, including video installations, graphic works, sculptures, and photographs. The Schirn will be hosting some twenty-five international artists, including Nora Al-Badri, Nouf Aljowaysir, Julian Charrière, Grégory Chatonsky, Kate Crawford & Vladan Joler, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Agnieszka Kurant, Trevor Paglen, Hito Steyerl, Sasha Stiles, and the collective Taller Estampa. Moreover, a series of time capsules—little curiosity cabinets—links the present to the past in the show, and thus embeds current changes through new technologies in a historical context.
From October the Schirn is showing Anna Hulačová (October 1, 2026–January 10, 2027) on the occasion of the Czech Republic being Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The artist’s figurative sculptures combine influences from Surrealism, Soviet Brutalism, and Czech folk art to create an autonomous cosmos. Hulačová explores the relationship between humans and nature from an eco-feminist perspective. In partnership with her own colonies of bees, she develops hybrid creatures and faceless science-fiction figures, in which concrete and honeycomb, organic and technoid, and nature and machine are fused.
And as a hightlight in autumn the Schirn is devoting the first major retrospective in Germany to Leonor Fini (October 23, 2026–February 28, 2027), providing comprehensive insight into her oeuvre with some 100 works. In spite of Fini’s proximity to Surrealism, she always maintained her independence and developed a unique pictorial language between dream, myth, and stagelike presentations. A central theme in Fini’s oeuvre is the study of her role as a woman and an artist. The exhibition shows Fini’s long and fascinating artistic career with paintings, drawings, photographs, and objects from some seventy years.
During 2026 a series of artistic interventions will also be initiated in the outdoor spaces of the Schirn in Bockenheim. The theme is the temporary phase of interim use and precisely this state of transition and transience.
Director: Sebastian Baden
Press contact: Johanna Pulz (Head of Press/Public Relations): presse@schirn.de / T +49 (0) 69 29 98 82 148
Press material: here.
