The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is opening “NIGHT”, the first major solo exhibition in Germany by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, winner of the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2026. BMW has supported the award as a partner since 2006, and its ties to Cattelan go back to a spaghetti-wrapped BMW i3 created in 2016. The show runs from 10 September 2026 to 7 March 2027 in Mies van der Rohe’s glass hall.
Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie is handing its glass hall to Maurizio Cattelan. The Italian artist, named recipient of the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2026, is staging “NIGHT”, described by the organisers as his first major solo exhibition in Germany. It opened on the evening of 9 September 2026 and remains on view until 7 March 2027.
Among the supporters behind the award is BMW, which has partnered the Preis der Nationalgalerie since 2006 — one of the longer-running cultural commitments by a carmaker in the German capital.
An exhibition built into the architecture
The show was curated by Lisa Botti, curator at the Neue Nationalgalerie, together with the museum’s director Klaus Biesenbach and in close collaboration with the artist. According to the organisers, it circles themes of history, power, memory, identity and belief, with familiar images and figures altered just enough to unsettle their meaning. Rather than treating Mies van der Rohe’s building as a neutral container, the works are said to activate the architecture as part of the exhibition itself.
Visitors enter through “Purgatory” (2026), a new commission that places a scaled-down Brandenburg Gate inside the museum as a threshold to walk around and through. A vertical axis runs through the centre of the hall between “Him” (2001), a kneeling male figure, and “Dawn” (2007), a female figure suspended in cruciform posture inside a transport crate. Overhead, thousands of taxidermied pigeons — the work “People” (2026), first shown in Venice in 1997 — settle across the ceiling structure.
The exhibition also spills outside. On the roof, “Never” (2003) appears as an animatronic child drummer drawn from Günter Grass’s “The Tin Drum”, its irregular beat carrying across the city. On the terrace, “Scar” (2026) is a cast-iron manhole cover inscribed with the titles of every work in the show. Two further new commissions, “After” (2026) and “Dust” (2026), deal with time and mortality; the latter, a fire extinguisher holding the cremated remains of a friend of the artist, was realised in accordance with the wishes of the deceased.
What the title means
The artist explains the choice of title in the release:
“Night is not simply the absence of light. It is a condition. The exhibition is not about darkness. It is about the loss of certainty. Night is also temporary — it always contains the possibility of morning, even if you cannot see it yet.”
The BMW connection
BMW and Cattelan first worked together in 2016 at Rencontres d’Arles, where the artist and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari built a project around the all-electric BMW i3. The car was covered entirely in spaghetti-themed foil — the “Spaghetti Car” — as a conceptual piece touching on art, consumption and sustainability. A decade earlier, in 2006, BMW was the inaugural partner of the 4th Berlin Biennale, which Cattelan co-curated.
The prize itself was founded in 2000 by the FREUNDE der Nationalgalerie and has been awarded for 25 years. The 2026 jury comprised Emma Lavigne, director of the Pinault Collection in Paris, Sam Keller, director of the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, and Klaus Biesenbach. From this year the award moves into the glass hall, giving the winning artist a single large-scale presentation rather than a group format.
Practical details
The exhibition is on show at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Straße 50, 10785 Berlin, from 10 September 2026 to 7 March 2027. During Berlin Art Week, opening hours are extended from 10 AM to 10 PM between Thursday 10 and Sunday 13 September 2026. A pop-up book by Papersmyths Ltd accompanies the show and is sold through the museum shop and online.
Source: www.press.bmwgroup.com