The Best Shows to See in Munich Right Now

‘Five Friends’ | Museum Brandhorst | 10 April – 17 August 

United in their examination of silence, chance, tradition and innovation, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly made significant contributions to the fields of music, dance, painting, sculpture and drawing in the American postwar era. As friends, they engaged in theoretical debates and love affairs. As artists, they collaborated and their practices evolved in parallel, with cross-referential influences and the political context of the Cold War visible throughout their work. Bringing together more than 180 artworks, scores, stage props, costumes, photographs and archival materials from the 1940s to the 1970s, this exhibition foregrounds queer aspects of their art and showcases how the five friends’ inquisitive and intimate interactions helped develop their oeuvres. 

‘This Must Be the Place’ | BRITTA RETTBERG in collaboration with THE BREEDER and RAVNIKAR | 10 May – 21 June

Works by six female artists – Nina Čelhar, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Kyriaki Goni, Caro Jost, Malvina Panagiotidi and Helena Tahir – are brought together in this exhibition to explore the shifting narratives of history and identity across pasts, presents and possible futures. Goni’s installation Martian Landscape (2022) comprises six Jacquard weavings, each depicting a desolate Mars-like landscape with an otherworldly quote at the top alluding to speculative futures. (‘The earth is finite. Space is the only way to go. Go to space, save humanity,’ reads one.) Elsewhere, Tahir’s carbon tracing drawing on paper, Facing South (The Last Sector) (2024), shows an Iraqi monument rendered in blue; the project weaves together the artist’s family heritage (her father fled Iraq due to an oppressive regime and hasn’t been able to return) with her own reflections on her first visit to the country. 

‘Breaking the walls, Dino appears’ | Rüdiger Schöttle | 10 May – 1 August

Curated by Japanese-Swiss artist Leiko Ikemura, this group exhibition bridges the artificial distinction between art and architecture by emphasizing their shared roots in the natural world. Ikemura’s own works sit alongside pieces by artists including Lina Bo Bardi, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Schütte. Together, they shift the anthropocentric view of architecture toward a more cosmological, holistic understanding, proposing that architectural endeavours should not only be seen as constructions for human use but also as projects that can help restore balance within interspecies and ecological relationships. Architectural models by Bardi (Museu de Arte de São Paulo, 1957–68) and Schütte (Bibliothek, Modell 1:10, 2014) question when a mock-up becomes an art object, while the purposeful blur of Ruff’s photograph d.p.b.02 (1999) integrates the pictured building within its surrounding landscape. 

‘everything, entangled, all at once’ | max goelitz in collaboration with alexander levy | 9 May – 5 July

With a title referencing both Donna Haraway’s concept of making kin and Karen Barad’s theory of entanglement, this exhibition uses works by Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Haroon Mirza and Julius von Bismarck to reconsider the boundaries between nature and artifice, re-evaluating the relationship between humans and our environment. Duk Hee Jordan’s wall installation Radicchio Leaf (2023) presents five mechanized pieces of the titular produce. Here, radicchio, representing monocultural agriculture, is combined with technology to juxtapose our exploitative relationship to nature via useless rotation disguised as efficient machinery. Mirza’s stone sculptures, on the other hand, such as 8'20" Sun Stone 02 (2025), combine light and electrical impulses to underline the interconnectedness of the physical, technological and spiritual. 

‘Gülbin Ünlü. Nostralgia’ | Haus der Kunst | 8 May – 22 February 2026

Munich-based artist Gülbin Ünlü defines Nostralgia – the fictional noun titling this site-specific installation at the staff entrance of Haus der Kunst – as ‘the melancholia for futures that never arrived’. Finding inspiration in science fiction’s use of portals as gateways to alternative realities, Nostralgia presents inaccessible yet fully visible doors. Although Ünlü’s portals remain closed, they nevertheless lure visitors in with speculative possibilities, suggesting a rupture in the time-space continuum. To dive deeper into the artist’s practice, I also recommend visiting Ünlü’s concurrent exhibition, ‘ultrahappy’, open at Villa Stuck until 11 May.

Remi Ajani | Jahn und Jahn | 10 May – 14 June

Be it a painting of wildflowers (The Infinite, 2025) or of a mother tucking her child into bed (Untitled, 2024), Remi Ajani’s new works in this exhibition draw on the word play that can be associated with still life. The canvases offer both a reflection on the fleetingness of life, hinting at the art-historical symbolism of vanitas, as well as an attempt to bring the everyday to a standstill, preserving the moment at hand. Starting with found and personal imagery, the London-based artist purposefully oscillates between abstraction and figuration to communicate emotional reactions in relation to and through the body. In turn, her relatable subject matter brings to the fore our perception of and (dis)connection to each other and the world around us.

‘FOXY PARK’ | Deborah Schamoni | 10 May – 9 August

A festive project in the gallery’s garden, this temporary sculpture park welcomes the summer season with works by Judith Hopf, Jonas Monka, Nils Norman and Nicole Wermers. Each of these artists has made a name for themselves with their playful approaches to public space. Wermers, known for her witty investigations of the structures of our built environment, presents a newly produced weatherproof version of her sculpture Kusine (2006). The three-metre-tall, painted-steel column with an ovular pattern and supported by a concrete base, references Constantin Brâncuși’s The Infinite Column (1938) as well as industrial design. Hopf, meanwhile, depicts what looks like a fossilized car tyre in her sculpture CMYK groß (taz) (2025) – a contemporary relic that offers some overdue attention to an unassuming yet pivotal invention.

_{Main image: Robert Rauschenberg, Axle,1964, four parts; oil and silkscreen on canvas, 274 × 610 cm. Courtesy: © Robert Rauschenberg; VGBild-Kunst, Bonn; Museum Ludwig; photograph: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln}