This photograph shows a half-lying leopard human lady, who has the legs, face and tail of a leopard and who otherwise has human attributes. Blood can be seen on her mouth and her false, claw-like fingernails. She is in a brightly lit white room on a pedestal.

Filmmuseum Munich

Matthew Barney: CREMASTER Cycle

July 9 – July 25, 2004

"An athlete and an intellectual, a storyteller and simultaneously a sculptor and costume designer with a love of detail – many completely contrasting qualities converge in Matthew Barney." (Ingvild Goetz)

Matthew Barney began working on his monumental CREMASTER cycle, a five-part film project, in 1994. The work is accompanied by sculptures, photographs and drawings. The CREMASTER cycle depicts highly complex levels of action that connect historical and mythical events with architectural concepts and biological models. Not only did Barney write the script and direct the CREMASTER cycle, he always took on one of the leading roles.

Although each film can be viewed as an independent artwork, it simultaneously forms a closed system together with the other parts. The title refers to the Latin term for the cremaster muscle, which raises and lowers the testes. In response to external stimuli, this muscle causes a contraction that cannot be deliberately influenced.

Because the cycle was not produced in chronological order, but is based on a biological model, it can be approached in various manners. By presenting the individual films of the CREMASTER cycle both chronologically as well as numerically, the Filmmuseum allowes viewers to select their desired approach to this work from the Sammlung Goetz holdings.

Chronological presentation:
CREMASTER 4, 1994, und CREMASTER 1, 1995
July 9, 2004, 21.00
CREMASTER 5, 1997, und CREMASTER 2, 1999
July 10, 2004, 21.00
CREMASTER 3, 2002
July 11, 2004, 21.00

Numerical presentation:
CREMASTER 1, 1995 und CREMASTER 2, 1999
July 23, 2004, 21.00
CREMASTER 3, 2002
July 24, 2004, 21.00
CREMASTER 4, 1994 und CREMASTER 5, 1997
July 25, 2004, 21.00

Cyrill Lachauer. The Sunset Route

June 20 – September 27, 2026 | Kunstpalais Erlangen

feat. Mike Brodie, Mouse Green, Rhyw, Mia Justice Smith, Moritz Stumm

In the exhibition The Sunset Route, on view at the Kunstpalais Erlangen and created in collaboration with the Sammlung Goetz, Cyrill Lachauer presents works from 2020 to 2025, a period during which he traveled on freight trains through the USA, Mexico, and Bosnia. In the spirit of poetic ethnography, he created photographs and films that are now being shown together for the first time. They all explore questions of freedom, self-determination, and resistance, as well as colonization, exclusion, and exploitation.

Laurie Simmons. Dollhouse Photographs

June 25 – August 30, 2026 | Deutsches Theatermuseum

The American artist Laurie Simmons is known for her photographs featuring tiny dolls representing stereotypical female roles in domestic interiors. The exhibition, a collaboration between Sammlung Goetz, Deutsches Theatermuseum and Filmfest Munich, presents a selection of works by Simmons that cast a critical gaze at gender stereotypes in the American middle class.

Sterling Ruby

July 16 – October 24, 2026 | Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster

The American artist Sterling Ruby, who lives and works in Los Angeles, is known for his multi-disciplinary body of work, which includes sculptures, ceramics, bronzes, collages, textiles, and expansive spray-painted canvases in which he intertwines a wide variety of autobiographical, art historical, and sociological sources. Through deconstruction and reconstruction, Ruby explores the idea of a non-hierarchical and borderless universe. The exhibition at the Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster lends insight into his multifaceted artistic practice through a selection of works created between 2008 and 2016.

Jeff Wall

November 17, 2026 – February 20, 2027 | Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster

Canadian artist Jeff Wall is one of the most influential photographers of our time. In his elaborately staged pictorial compositions, he combines the narrative of cinema with painting. Wall became known for his large-format lightbox images, which are formally more reminiscent of the world of advertising than that of fine art. With this technique, he revolutionized the medium of photography, elevating it to the height of painting and sculpture. The exhibition at the Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster presents a selection of his iconic lightbox images from the 1990s.