With their exhibition “Stillleben mit Gemüse”, the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset transforms the Städel Museum into a fascinating interplay of reality and illusion. Their sculptures and installations enter into a dialogue with the architecture and the permanent collection of the Städel Museum, which spans over 700 years, opening up new and surprising perspectives.
Your Visit
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Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun 10 am – 6 pm
Thur 10 am – 9 pm
Mon closed
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Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun 10 am – 6 pm
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- Entry From €19 / €17, €10 Tue from 3 pm
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- Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
About the Exhibition
Unlike other exhibitions, “Stillleben mit Gemüse” extends across the entire Städel Museum. Two immersive installations in the Contemporary Art Collection form the core of the presentation, which unfolds throughout the historic collections and into the neighbouring Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung. The exhibition places the visitors at the centre by inviting them to embark on a treasure hunt where artworks can be discovered in unusual places, often in almost absurd dialogue with the works from the collection.
Elmgreen & Dragset have been collaborating since the mid-1990s and are among some of the most influential contemporary artists working today. While often being referred to as sculptors, the artists work in an expanded field that also includes installation, performance and architecture. Their works challenge familiar spatial structures and imbue both public and institutional spaces with a distinctive atmosphere.
Elmgreen & Dragset succeed in making familiar museum structures experienceable anew through nuanced shifts. Through their targeted interventions, they open up interstitial spaces and question habitual perspectives and expectations.
Elmgreen & Dragset
The Visitor, 2025
Elmgreen & Dragset
Elmgreen & Dragset
The Conversation, 2024
Elmgreen & Dragset
Social Media (Terrier), 2022
Elmgreen & Dragset situate their figurative sculptures in such a way that they invite the audience to participate in an active game of storytelling. By redirecting and shifting the visitor’s gaze, the artists bring everyday moments that are easily overlooked into focus and turn these into poetic scenes charged with both criticality and humour. Through their elaborate sense of display, they are able to deal with serious questions about social structures, behavioural patterns rooted in conventions and institutional routines in an engaging rather than didactic way. The artist duo also examines how the museum itself shapes our perception of art history. They subtly subvert traditional forms of presentation and play with the rules of exhibition making.
Curator
Svenja Grosser (Head of Contemporary Art, Städel Museum)
Project Manager
Maja Lisewski (Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art., Städel Museum)
Gallery
Elmgreen & Dragset
60 Minutes, 2025
Elmgreen & Dragset
Still Life (Bullfinch), 2024
Elmgreen & Dragset
Garden of Eden, 2022
About Elmgreen & Dragset
Michael Elmgreen (b. 1961 in Copenhagen, Denmark) and Ingar Dragset (b. 1969 in Trondheim, Norway) are based in Berlin and have been collaborating since 1995. They have held numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2024–25), the Centre Pompidou-Metz (2023–24), the Fondazione Prada, Milan (2022), the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2018–19), the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2013–14), Serpentine Gallery, London (2006) and the Tate Modern, London (2004). Their works have also been presented at numerous biennials. In 2017, Elmgreen & Dragset curated the 15th Istanbul Biennial.
Their best-known public artworks include Prada Marfa (2005), a full-scale replica of a Prada boutique in the middle of the Texan desert, and Van Gogh’s Ear, 2016. In Berlin, the artists won the German government’s competition to design a “Monument to Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism”, which was inaugurated in the Tiergarten in 2008. The artists have received numerous awards, including the 14th Robert Jacobsen Prize from the Würth Foundation in Künzelsau (2021) and the National Gallery Prize for Young Art from the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2002).
Sponsors & Patrons
Sponsored by
Gemeinnützige Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain GmbH, SEB, Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.
With additional support from
New Carlsberg Foundation, Danish Arts Foundation
Media Partner
Monopol – Magazin für Kunst und Leben, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main
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