Overview

• The exhibition runs in Düsseldorf from September 27, 2025 to February 15, 2026 at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K20).
• It assembles more than 130 works across painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, film, literature and archives by 34 international artists.
• Art historian Anke Kempkes initiated and co-curated the show with Isabelle Malz, following earlier institutional reluctance and difficult provenance research linked to persecution, wartime losses and missing heirs.
• Highlights include a wall-filling 1920 canvas by Dame Ethel Walker and Ludwig von Hofmann’s 1913 Die Quelle, a work once owned by writer Thomas Mann.
• The presentation examines coded representation in works such as Nils Dardel’s 1918 Der sterbende Dandy and traces early 20th-century queer networks around Paris salons led by Natalie Barney, Gertrude Stein, Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach.