“NIGHT” at Neue Nationalgalerie Will Be Maurizio Cattelan’s First Berlin Retrospective

Maurizio Cattelan will have his first major solo exhibition in Germany this fall when “NIGHT” opens at the Neue Nationalgalerie during Berlin Art Week. The show forms the 2026 Preis der Nationalgalerie, for which Cattelan was selected by an international jury, and brings earlier works together with new commissions.

The exhibition reaches back across several decades of Cattelan’s career. Among the works on view are Novecento, La Rivoluzione Siamo Noi, Him, and Untitled, an animatronic sculpture inspired by the protagonist of Günter Grass’s novel, The Tin Drum. The museum connects these works to recurring questions in Cattelan’s work around childhood, violence, identity, authority, and the ways historical memory persists in the present.

“This exhibition developed through a very close collaboration with Maurizio Cattelan over an extended period of time, including repeated visits to Berlin and ongoing exchange about the Neue Nationalgalerie and its historical context,” said at Neue Nationalgalerie curator Lisa Botti. “Conceived specifically for this site, it brings together existing works and new commissions that respond directly to its location. The title ‘NIGHT’ suggests a condition in which things are not necessarily hidden, but seen differently. In the reduced light of evening, familiar forms can become strange, while overlooked details come into focus.”

At the center of “NIGHT” is a new site-specific commission created for the Neue Nationalgalerie that alters the spatial organization of the building and affects the relationship between the art, the audience, and the architecture. Museum director Klaus Biesenbach goes further, saying that Cattelan’s intervention will transform the Mies van der Rohe building—a structure often compared to a temple—into a church that becomes part of the exhibition itself.

Berlin also gives the exhibition a useful historical echo. Cattelan co-curated the fourth Berlin Biennale in 2006, exactly 20 years before “NIGHT.” When announcing his selection for the prize, the jury pointed to his longstanding engagement with power, religion, death, memory, responsibility, and institutional authority, arguing that those concerns carry particular resonance in Berlin and Germany.

“NIGHT” will be on view at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin from September 10, 2026, through March 7, 2027.