Special exhibitions

Sonderausstellung

17th may to 5th october 2025

Artist Meets Archive #4: Jimmi Wing Ka Ho
Invisible City - An Artistic Intervention in the RJM’s Permanent Exhibition

How visible is a city's colonial past? Jimmi Wing Ka Ho traces the history of the Chinese metropolis of Qingdao, which was under German occupation from 1898 to 1914. Based on historical images from the RJM archive, he examines the traces of the city's violent transformation and the associated narratives that have survived to this day. The photographs and video works created on site open up a variety of - sometimes contradictory - perspectives and blur the boundaries between archival memory and personal experience.

16th may to 15th june 2025

Next!

is “What do you see and what do I see?” - a celebration of individual perspectives.
Organized by: Internationale Photoszene Köln, German Children's and Youth Film Center (KJF), SK Stiftung Kultur, jfc Medienzentrum
Supported by: RheinEnergie Stiftung Kultur and the Annelie and Uwe Hoffmann Foundation

from 20 September 2023

SPACE4KIDS
Play time!

Since September 2023, SPACE4KIDS has been located in the centre of the museum 1,400 m2 that is all yours. Here you can play, discover and try things out to your heart's content - and that's is even expressly encouraged! Your ideas and questions this space to keep growing.

Special exhibition

I MISS YOU
About missing, giving back and remembering

Since 2021, the RJM has been intensively involved in the planned repatriation of the Benin bronzes from Nigeria. The restitution debates have never been as explosive as they are today. But what is behind the restitution demands? What do they mean in concrete terms for the people who are affected by them? What happened at the place of origin after an object was collected and left its place? What emptiness did it leave behind in its country of origin? "I MISS YOU" is a new series about grief, missing, melancholy, broken memories and emptiness.

29th october 202 to 15th march 2026

AMAZONIA - Photographs by SEBASTIÃO SALGADO -- NEU

From 29 October, we will be the first museum in Germany to show the exhibition AMAZONIA by Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. The approximately 200 black and white photographs depict the diversity of the Amazonian landscapes as well as the faces and realities of life of the indigenous inhabitants who have been preserving this ecosystem for centuries. Zurich is the main global partner of the exhibition tour and is making the exhibition in Cologne possible as part of its 150th anniversary in Germany together with the sponsors DEG - Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH, KfW Entwicklungsbank and TASCHEN GmbH.