With "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: un|realized", the Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster is presenting an exhibition from 4 April to 28 June 2026 that breaks new ground in Germany: for the first time, the focus is not on the world-famous covered monuments and landscapes of the artist duo, but on those projects that were never built, never approved, never completed. This is precisely the appeal of the show in Münster: it tells the story of a two-person team whose fame is based on spectacular large-scale projects, but whose work is just as strongly characterized by failure, resistance and decades of perseverance. On display are mainly lithographs, collages and graphics from the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation in New York, supplemented by loans from private and public collections.
The show thus celebrates not the triumph of the spectacle, but the productive defeat of art. More than 100 works from around 60 years make it clear that Christo and Jeanne-Claude did not only develop their artistic power in the finished event, but already in the design, on paper, in the tough struggle with politics, administration and justice. The long-term project "Over the River", which the couple worked on for around 25 years before Christo finally abandoned it in 2017, is particularly strong; the planned wrapping of Picasso's "Bust of Sylvette" in New York also appears as an example of an unforgotten undone event.
