The Kunsthaus Zürich is opening the 2026 exhibition year with a program that celebrates the diversity of art in all its facets. Between classical mastery and contemporary provocation, a field of tension is created that opens up new perspectives for visitors. Director Ann Demeester describes the spirit of the museum programmatically: "We want to move people with art - through diversity, change and openness."
Under the motto "We continue to change", after the colorful work by US artist Jeffrey Gibson in the foyer of the Chipperfield building, the Kunsthaus 2026 focuses on dialogues of contrasts: quiet and loud, contemplative and combative, traditional and radically new.
Kerry James Marshall - The Histories
Kerry James Marshall, one of the most important painters of our time, brings color and political depth to the canvas. His monumental paintings tell of the history and identity of the African-American community - with an unmistakable sense of beauty, dignity and resistance. Supported by Swiss Re, the exhibition is dedicated to the struggle for visibility, representation and self-determination in an art history dominated by white narratives.
February 27 to August 16, 2026
Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Studio), 2014, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchase, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation Gift, Acquisitions Fund and The Metropolitan Museum of Art Multicultural Audience Development Initiative Gift, 2015 © Kerry James Marshall. Photo by Matthew Hollow. Image courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, London
Félicien Rops - Laboratory of Delights
The Belgian symbolist Félicien Rops was a provocateur of his time. His erotically charged, often disturbing depictions reflect an era between bourgeois double standards and the dawn of modernism. The Kunsthaus shows how Rops' drawings and etchings not only break taboos, but also reveal gender images and power structures in a dissecting way - a sensual-intellectual pleasure between decadence and social criticism.
March 6 to May 31, 2026
Marisol - Between Pop Art and Poetry
With the first major retrospective in Europe, the Kunsthaus Zürich is paying tribute to the French-Venezuelan artist Marisol. Her sculptures and assemblages move between Pop Art, Dada and indigenous imagery. With irony and poignancy, she sheds light on questions of identity, consumption and female self-determination. Marisol's self-portraits are both masks and revelations - a fascinating interplay of distance and proximity that shatters the conventions of the art world.
April 17 to August 23, 2026
Marisol, La visita, 1964, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, © 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich, Photo: Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv, Britta Schlier
Vilhelm Hammershøi - painter of quiet sound
Few artists have captured melancholy as subtly as the Dane Vilhelm Hammershøi. His interiors, flooded with pale light and quiet poetry, are meditations on loneliness and time. The Kunsthaus is dedicating a major show to the "Vermeer of the North" that celebrates the timeless beauty of stillness - as a counterpoint to the restlessness of our present day.
July 3 to October 25, 2026
Maria Lassnig & Edvard Munch - flow of painting = flow of life
An encounter between two giants of self-inquiry: Maria Lassnig and Edvard Munch. Both explored the field of tension between inner world and outer image, body and emotion, color and feeling. This exhibition, supported by UBS, turns the expressive power of their painting into a dialog of sensitivity - a visual psychogram about vulnerability, self-assertion and artistic freedom.
October 2, 2026 to February 21, 2027
ReCollect! and the collection - continuity in transition
The collection remains the vibrant center of the Kunsthaus. In 2026, it will mark the double anniversary of Alberto Giacometti's 125th birthday and the 60th anniversary of his death. New presentations will show the famous figures in dialog with works from Fra Angelico to Rothko. At the same time, Wolfgang Laib sets poetic accents with his contemplative installations - quiet, fragrant, almost invisible.
The participatory "Art for All" series also once again opens up spaces for encounters: for example with Monster Chetwynd's monumental sculpture Zardoz, which stands as an ironic thinking space between fantasy and philosophy, or with Jeffrey Gibson's colorful installation that celebrates diversity as a strength.
A house in motion
The 2026 annual program shows the Kunsthaus Zürich as an open, polyphonic place of art. Here, classical meets contemporary, reflection meets rebellion - and each work reflects the central theme of the year: change.
Or, as Ann Demeester puts it: "We want art to surprise, move, comfort and irritate - sometimes all at the same time."
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