Berlin is entrusting Maurizio Cattelan with one of its major exhibition openings this autumn. From September 10, 2026, to March 7, 2027, the Neue Nationalgalerie will host NIGHT, the Italian artist's first major solo exhibition in Germany. The project brings to the museum works that have defined different periods of his career, alongside a series of new productions developed specifically for the building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
The choice of venue is an integral part of the project. The Neue Nationalgalerie is not treated as a neutral container: the exhibition layout is conceived in dialogue with its spaces and their presence within Berlin's cultural landscape. For an institution dedicated to preserving and showcasing artistic modernity, inviting Cattelan means bringing into its program an artist who has frequently drawn on figures, objects, and imagery firmly rooted in the collective memory, displacing them into destabilizing contexts.
The exhibition also coincides with the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2026. This pairing places NIGHT within a packed period for the museum, in which programming dedicated to contemporary research coexists with a re-examination of works now widely recognized in the international discourse. It is therefore not just the return of an Italian artist to a major German institution, but an event that actively contributes to how Berlin constructs the dialogue between cultural heritage, contemporary production, and the museum's public space.
A Return from a Different Position
Maurizio Cattelan, born in Padua in 1960, is already well acquainted with the German capital. Twenty years ago, he took part in the 4th Berlin Biennale as a co-curator. NIGHT, however, marks a distinct shift: not a contribution to a group show, but a large-scale solo exhibition built around his work and the specific architectural qualities of the Neue Nationalgalerie.
The exhibition is curated by Lisa Botti and museum director Klaus Biesenbach; the project was developed in close collaboration with the artist. This is a significant detail, as the new commissions are not presented as a marginal addition to a retrospective selection. The stated goal is to bring together renowned pieces and previously unseen works within a configuration tailored specifically for Berlin.
In a museum whose architecture possesses such a distinct identity, this approach also redefines the role of the retrospective. Rather than organizing a career in chronological sequence, the exhibition design can place the works under mutual pressure, forcing them to engage with a specific context. The value of the operation will therefore hinge not only on the presence of individual works, but on the way the layout exposes distance, proximity, and friction between them.
The works and focal points of the exhibition
Among the announced works are Novecento from 1997, La Rivoluzione Siamo Noi from 2000, Him from 2001, and Untitled from 2003. The latter draws inspiration from Il tamburo di latta by Günter Grass. The selected core reflects several threads running through Cattelan's practice: the confrontation with history, forms of power, memory, identity, and faith.
These themes carry particular weight in a city like Berlin, where institutions, architecture, and cultural sites are continuously swept up in debates about the past and its representations. Yet, it would be reductive to automatically superimpose the meaning of the works onto the urban context hosting them. The exhibition is framed neither as a chapter in Berlin's history nor as a documentary project on the city. Rather, its appeal lies in its ability to bring to the fore, within the museum, tensions that the artist has already placed at the center of his visual language.
Him, in particular, is one of Cattelan's most debated works, highlighting how deeply his output can invoke politically and historically fraught imagery. Its presence will require a display strategy capable of moving beyond the effect of a mere icon. Situating it alongside other works and new commissions can instead provide a broader reading, one where provocation, the vulnerability of the image, and the construction of memory do not remain isolated compartments.
Even titles such as Novecento and La Rivoluzione Siamo Noi point to a lexicon where cultural and political references enter the artwork without turning into illustration. This is where the Berlin solo show can also prove valuable to those who follow contemporary art outside its most specialized circles: it does not promise an unambiguous answer, but presents works that question the responsibility of displaying symbols and figures within a shared space.
The museum as cultural infrastructure
For Breaking City, the story is particularly compelling due to the relationship between an artist, a building, and a metropolis. Major national museums do not operate solely through their collections: they choose which languages to make visible, which conflicts to host, and which audiences to invite to engage with them. A Cattelan solo exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie operates on this level, bringing a body of work known for its ability to generate conflicting interpretations into an institution at the core of the German cultural system.
The new productions, conceived for the museum's spaces, will be the most anticipated aspect of the exhibition. Without further details on the works, it is premature to attribute subjects or forms to them. However, the project's scope is already clear: not merely a presentation of pre-existing works relocated to Berlin, but an intervention that takes the space of the Neue Nationalgalerie as a creative condition. In such cases, architecture and exhibition design directly influence the reading of the works, visit durations, and even the physical distances between the audience and what is on display.
The exhibition will also help keep attention focused on the presence of Italian artists in international institutions. Cattelan has an established trajectory, yet his return to Berlin arrives with a project not confined to celebrating well-known works. The combination of historical works and new commissions suggests an intention to test how those images continue to function when put back into play, in another era and before a different audience.
NIGHT will remain open until March 7, 2027. In the coming months, the exhibition layout will define the concrete scope of the show: the arrangement of the works, their relationship with the vast spaces of the Neue Nationalgalerie, and the weight given to new interventions will determine whether the project succeeds in transforming the museum into an interpretive device, as well as a showcase for one of the most recognizable Italian artists on the global stage.
