Annual program 2026

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

The exhibition “Kathrin Sonntag and Gabriele Münter. The Travelling Eye” presents photographs by two Berlin-born artists engaging in a dialogue that spans a time difference of more than a century. Kathrin Sonntag (b. 1981) has embarked on a journey through the hitherto little-known photographic oeuvre of one of the most important artists of German Expressionism, in order to respond with images from her own photographic archive to selected photographs by Gabriele Münter (1877–1962). Gabriele Münter captured the featured photographs in 1899/1900 during her two-year journey through the United States. The outstanding compositional quality of these images already demonstrates Münter's search for artistic expression, prior to her painterly work. Sonntag became known for installations that place her own and found photographic material into a spatial dialogue. By juxtaposing her work with Münter’s photographs, Sonntag creates a space of resonance within the present, playfully highlights correspondences, and stimulates the pleasure of discovery. The exhibition is a collaboration with the Museum Marta Herford, where it was on view from June 8, 2024–January 12, 2025.

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

The monographic exhibition is devoted to Gabriele Münter (1877–1962), one of the most important figures in German Expressionism and a key voice of the early 20th-century European avant-garde. Drawing from the Selinka Collection of the Kunstmuseum, the exhibition centers on the period between 1908 and 1914, which was among the most productive of her career. During these years, Murnau in the Bavarian Alpine foothills became Münter’s preferred place of painting, where her ability to simplify forms, her clear color contrasts, and strikingly precise painterly style came fully into their own. In recent years, Gabriele Münter’s work has increasingly received international attention, most recently in solo exhibitions at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, and at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. "Awakening in Form and Color" at Kunstmuseum Ravensburg marks the first solo exhibition in Baden-Württemberg in two decades.

It's All About Time 
April 11 until July 19, 2026

It takes a year for the earth to circle the sun—a unit we use to talk about age or the passing of time. For one year, Tehching Hsieh (b. in Nanzhou, Taiwan, 1950, lives in New York) subjected himself to the dizzying discipline of stamping a time card with a punch clock every hour, taking a self-portrait at the same time. One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece) is one of the most legendary and uncompromising meditations about time. The exhibition “It's All About Time” brings together six expansive works by artists from around the world that allow us to experience the passing of time sensually, question standardized ways of measuring time, and make us aware of the various dimensions of experiencing time. Natural cycles and biological rhythms encounter the beat of late capitalism, rituals suspend a linear sense of time in favor of an expanded experience of the present and are in contrast of a passing of our lifetime. “It's All About Time” directs our gaze to the complex phenomenon of time—“not as an object of our knowledge, but as a dimension of our being” (Merleau-Ponty).

With works by Jill Baroff, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Rafik Greiss, David Horvitz, Tehching Hsieh, Alicja Kwade

Zeitfragen: Sammlung trifft Gegenwart (Questions of Time. The Collection Meets the Present)
August 8 until November 15, 2026

The Selinka Collection of the Kunstmuseum Ravensburg consists of works from the twentieth century with a focus on German expressionism, which emerged during a period of political upheavals, new artistic forms of expression, and social transformation. The exhibition series “Zeitfragen. Sammlung trifft Gegenwart” (Questions of Time. The Collection Meets the Present) brings select works from the collection into a dialogue with contemporary works, making both continuities and ruptures between different generations and contexts visible. These juxtapositions invite us to playfully view topics in the collection from new perspectives, question historical and social narratives, and consider current discourses. 

With works by Kader Attia, Fiona Banner, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Otto Mueller, Edvard Munch, Daniel Richter, Ulrike Rosenbach, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Agnès Varda

Janet Cardiff: The Forty Part Motet
August 8 until November 15, 2026

The sound installation The Forty Part Motet (2001) by Canadian artist Janet Cardiff (b. 1957) focuses on the sculptural qualities of sound and offers a unique spatial sound experience. The piece’s point of departure is the polyphonic Renaissance musical work Spem in Alium, composed by Thomas Tallis around 1570 for eight choirs made up of five voices each. Janet Cardiff recorded the singers’ voices on separate audio tracks, and each voice can now be heard through one of the forty loudspeakers that are arranged in an oval. The listeners’ movement in the space determines their experience of the sound and makes it possible to concentrate on the intimacy of the various solo voices as well as to dive into the suggestive expansive composition as a whole. With thanks to Tate Modern, London.

Charlotte Salomon: Leben? oder Theater? (Life? or Theater?)
December 5, 2026 until March 29, 2027 

Charlotte Salomon’s (Berlin, 1917–Auschwitz, 1943) extraordinary oeuvre was created in her exile in southern France within just two years after fleeing from Berlin in 1939. Leben? oder Theater? (1940–1942) is an extensive collection of colorful gouaches with script-like scenes consisting of texts and pictures. Divided into three acts, the work links drawing and painting with elements from literature, film, theater, music, and philosophy. Alternating close-ups and long shots, the German-Jewish artist merges autobiographical and fictive elements into a virtuosic new narrative of her life and her family history. The antisemitic persecution and existential threat of the Nazi regime are the frame of her so-called Singespiel [music play] that focusses on interpersonal relationships and questions about fate and self-determination. The exhibition presents 235 of a total of 769 gouaches and provides insights into an artistic oeuvre that captivates viewers with its innovative visual vocabulary and experimental narrative structure. 

In cooperation with the Jewish Museum Amsterdam. Curated by Irene Faber, formerly collection curator at the Jewish Museum Amsterdam; coordinated at Kunstmuseum Ravensburg by Lea Daro.

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.