SCULPTURAL

SCULPTURAL: The New Galleries is the first-ever large-scale presentation of the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s sculpture collection, spanning multiple media and periods. Across an area of 1,500 square metres, over 500 sculptures, reliefs, paintings, works on paper and photographs as well as spatial and video installations from 2,500 years of art history will prompt some surprising comparisons – antiquity versus the present day, two versus three dimensions, miniature versus monumental.

A special focus is the museum’s recently uncovered trove of »sculptures en miniature«, as the first director, Alfred Lichtwark, called these tours de force of numismatic art in the form of coins, medals and sculptural reliefs in gold, silver and bronze. These new discoveries will be exhibited alongside masterpieces in multiple media, such as larger-than-life sculptures by Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol, while antique portraits enter into a dialogue with contemporary photography, and reliefs by Käthe Kollwitz with body casts from the 1960s and video works by Marina Abramović and others.

The presentation developed out of the research project »From the second to the third dimension«, for which around 6,000 coins, medals and plaques are for the first time being reviewed, restored, digitised and researched in their respective contexts. The first objects will be published online in January 2026.

The research and presentation are made possible by the Dorit & Alexander Otto Foundation, which is once again acting as a major sponsor.
Other cooperation partners include the University of Hamburg, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Selected artists

Marina Abramović/Ulay, Arnold Böcklin, Constantin Brancusi, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Eleanor Antin, Hans Arp, Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, François-Rupert Carabin, Jean Baptiste Carpeaux, Giovanni Cavino, Jules-Clément Chaplain, Alexandre Charpentier, Alphonse Eugène Lechevrel, Pierre Jean David d’Angers, Sebastian Dadler, Edgar Degas, Jean-Baptiste-Daniel Dupuis, Julius von Ehren, James Ensor, August Gaul, Alberto Giacometti, Julio González, Henri Charles Guérard, Mona Hatoum, Armand Francois-Joseph Henrion, Johann Georg Hinz, Max Klinger, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Daniel Friedrich Loos und Friedrich Wilhelm Loos, George Minne, Fernand Khnopff, Käthe Kollwitz, Henri Laurens, Alphonse Eugène Lechevrel, Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Aristide Maillol, Ewald Mataré, Henri Matisse, Adolf Menzel, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Olaf Metzel, Bruce Nauman, Anne-Marie Carl-Nielsen, Victor Peter, Antonio Pisano (called Pisanello), Pablo Picasso, Hubert Ponscarme, Hans Reinhart d. Ä., Medardo Rosso, Jean Désiré Ringel d'Illzach, Auguste Rodin, Oscar Roty, Thomas Ruff, Johann Gottfried Schadow, Anton Scharff, Georges Segal, Adriaen Valck , Franz Erhard Walther and others

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The sculptural forms suggest associations between dimensions and times based on themes such as the settings for art and the emotions and facial expressions in portraits and masks. While the museum’s col-lection has to date focused on a span of 800 years, here it will be extended by further eventful centuries. Loans of prime works from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and European private collections will complement the selection from the permanent collection on display in the new sculpture galleries. These extend from the classical columned hall, an architecturally imposing symbol of an early engagement with antiquity, to the rotunda, where a large site-specific contemporary work has been commissioned to conclude the exhibition circuit.

Cooperations & Support

Made possible by Dorit & Alexander Otto Stiftung, who already supported the modernisation of the Kunsthalle in 2016.

Cooperation partners:
•    Universität Hamburg, Institute for Archaeology and Cultural History of the Ancient Mediterranean Region
•    Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Portal ikmk.net
•    Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Curator and Director of the Collection and Research Project

• Dr. Annabelle Görgen-Lammers

Assistant Curator, Project Coordinator and Research Assistant

• Ann-Kathrin Hubrich

Research Assistant in Numismatics

• Patrik Pohl

Production Manager and Project Assistant

• Petra Bassen

Student Assistants

• Tessa Scheunert und Dana Zacharias