Video Still showing the artist herself dancing in a red blouse and light blue denim shorts. Tracey Emin, Sammlung Goetz Munich

Sammlung Goetz in Haus der Kunst

Why I Never Became a Dancer

September 30, 2011 – April 1, 2012

Why I Never Became a Dancer is the second exhibition to be mounted at Haus der Kunst as a joint project with the Sammlung Goetz. It presents 15 video works by international artists addressing the theme of youth and exploring the social behavioural patterns of young people both privately and within the wider community. The focus is not only on today’s generation but also on youth culture in the past 30 years.

With Doug Aitken, Andrea Bowers, Martin Brand, Cao Fei, Rineke Dijkstra, Tracey Emin, Nina Könnemann, Mark Leckey, Paul Pfeiffer, Beat Streuli, Ryan Trecartin, Rosemarie Trockel, Gillian Wearing and Tobias Zielony.

“Every generation has its own idols, its own language, its own music, fashion and forms of expression. Until they have found those, young people try out everything from alternative lifestyles to drugs to the virtual world of the internet. I’d like to show that here.“ (Ingvild Goetz)

Tracey Emin‘s work Why I Never Became a Dancer, from which the exhibition takes its name, invites viewers into the world of her youth in Margate (England), and her dreams of escaping small-town life. In Rineke Dijkstra‘s The Buzzclub, Liverpool, UK / Mysteryworld, Zaandam, NL young people in empty spaces reconstruct the moves they had just moments ago been making in a crowded room. In this way, the artist shows the viewer an isolated model situation. Doug Aitken‘s i am in you, with its associative film sequences, reveals the lifeworld of a little girl.

Why I Never Became a Dancer.
Sammlung Goetz im Haus der Kunst

124 pages, 458 ill., softcover
German/English
2011, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern
ISBN 978-3-7757-3154-6
€ 10,00

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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. Her series In and Around the House (1978/79) is exemplary for this set-up photography. The series is the centerpiece of the exhibition, with 56 black-and-white images showing a doll occupied with the mundane chores of a housewife in the cozy environment of a dollhouse. The exhibition “Laurie Simmons: Dollhouse Photographs”, a collaboration of Sammlung Goetz, Deutsches Theatermuseum and FILMFEST MÜNCHEN, 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

Los Angeles-based American artist Sterling Ruby is known for his cross-genre work, which ranges from ceramics and bronzes, collages and textiles, to enormous, spray-painted paintings. In his works, Ruby weaves together a variety of different autobiographical, art-historical, and sociological sources. Through deconstruction and reconstruction, he probes the idea of a non-hierarchical and borderless universe. The exhibition at the Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster provides insight into his multi-layered artistic practice.

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.