Nan Goldin’s acclaimed traveling exhibition, “This Will Not End Well,” has become a site of contention ahead of its opening in Berlin this week amid growing tensions over the alleged rise of antisemitism in the German cultural sphere.
The American activist artist distanced herself from a symposium planned for this weekend, stoking debate in the press and on social media. After Goldin made statements critiquing the event on Instagram, a few panelists have started to cancel their participation in the event, among them the prominent artist Hito Steyerl.
Goldin’s show is set to open on Saturday, November 22, at Neue Nationalgalerie. The following day, a one-day symposium called “Art and Activism in Times of Polarization,” is scheduled to take place. The event, officially separate from the artist’s retrospective, will address Israel’s war in Gaza, antisemitism, and Islamophobia, according to a description on the museum’s website.
“I was shocked by the press release,” Goldin said in a telephone interview. “It was attached to my show and we did not know about or see the press release in advance. This is the first time this has ever happened.” She added that she will be giving a speech on Friday evening at the opening. “I respect that they are allowing me to speak and keeping their promise,” the artist said.
“We fully support the artist’s right to express her opinion, even if we don’t always agree with her. We are also convinced that a symposium like ours is long overdue and necessary at this time,” said Biesenbach.
Tensions mounted last weekend when the activist group Strike Germany called for the event to be shut down on their social media on November 12. The organization, which has been active since the start of this year, encourages culture workers to boycott German cultural institutions as a “call to refuse [their] use of McCarthyist policies that suppress freedom of expression, specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine,” according to their Instagram.
Neue Nationalgalerie and its sculpture garden © Simon Menges.
In their post, they stated that the symposium would “be largely dominated by genocide-denying Zionists, while pretending to offer ‘nuanced’ positions.” The group claimed that the event “make[s] the Neue Nationalgalerie look like a safe and reliable cultural institution” in spite of the “hard-line Zionist German state that funds it.”
At the time of posting, a mix of Jewish, Israeli, German, and Palestinian culture workers, including Candice Breitz, Steyerl, and Eyal Weizman, were scheduled to speak. Goldin said that Breitz and Weizman had initially joined the symposium to support Goldin. “I thought it was good that their voices be heard in this context,” she said.
Goldin, via her official Instagram @nangoldinstudio, liked and commented on Strike Germany’s post. “I want it to be clear that I was not aware of the symposium until an ally sent me the press release, which connected it to my name and my show. I wanted it canceled from the beginning, but I was only able to divorce my name,” she said in the comment. “It is clear to me that the museum organized this symposium as a prophylactic to secure its position in the German discussion—in other words, to prove they do not support my politics. They knew who they were inviting.”
Klaus Biesenbach, the director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, confirmed the symposium was organized independently of the artist and that the museum informed the artist about its plans but did not ask for her permission. Goldin was invited to participate in the symposium. “In the process, [she] declined to do so, making clear that she disagreed with the event and any association between it and her exhibition,” he said. “In the current heated atmosphere, the process is challenging for everyone involved.”
Klaus Biesenbach. © Bryan Burns
This week, Steyerl confirmed that she canceled her keynote address but declined to state a reason when reached over email. Breitz and Weizman are also no longer participating, nor is artist Raphael Malik. Breitz confirmed on social media that each canceled participation “presumably for a variety of reasons and from a variety of perspectives” and that Breitz would not be making further comments.
The writer Masha Gessen, who wrote a much-cited article in the New Yorker on Germany’s memory culture last year, turned to social media to correct German media outlets’ reports that they had pulled out of the symposium, stating that these are “inaccurate,” adding that “organizers took so long to make the invitation official that I could no longer make it work with my schedule.”
A shifting list of participants for Sunday’s symposium includes, at the time of publishing, German artist Leon Kahane and Israeli artist Ruth Patir, the latter of whom represents her country at the Venice Biennale this year, as well as Haifa-based, Palestinian artist Muhammad Toukhy, and Palestine-born artist Osama Zatar, who is based in Vienna. Neither Goldin nor her work are to be the subject of discussion, according to a statement from museum this week.
Goldin, who was awarded Germany’s prestigious Käthe Kollwitz prize in 2023, is well-known for her activism, namely in fighting members of the Sackler family for their profiteering from the opioid crisis and for her involvement with the AIDS organization Act Up. Goldin was one of the co-signatories of a divisive open letter in the art magazine Artforum, published on October 19, that criticized the Israeli army’s actions in Gaza but did not mention the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the ensuing hostage crisis.
Molly Crabapple, Debra Winger, and Nan Goldin. Photo: Jason Rosenberg.
The exhibition, which looks at the entirety of Goldin’s artistic career, including her seminal slideshow work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. “My struggle now with the war on Gaza is not apparent in this exhibition,” the artist noted. On the current political climate in Berlin, the artist said “it is surprising to me that Berlin has become a center of repression. People are so scared to say anything.”
Before Neue Nationalgalerie, the show had been on view at Moderna Museet and at the Stedelijk Museum. It continues to the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan in October 2025 before wrapping its European tour at the Grand Palais in March 2026.
The event planned for Sunday is organized by Anne Frank Education Centre director Meron Mendel and writer Saba-Nur Cheema. In June, the pair organized a symposium at the Berliner Festspiele with the stated focus on fostering Jewish-Muslim dialogue, combating antisemitism and Islamophobia, and examining the effects of the Middle East conflict on social cohesion in Germany. Mendel was also active initially in creating discourse with the organizers of the 2022 Documenta 15, and heavily criticized the curators and organization’s handling of accusations of anti-semitism.
Nan Goldin, C as Madonna in the dressing room, Bangkok (C as Madonna im Umkleideraum, Bangkok), from the series “The Other Side” (1992). ©Nan Goldin. Courtesy the artist
“With the symposium [at the Neue Nationalgalerie], we intend to provide much-needed space for a constructive, long overdue debate,” said Biesenbach in an emailed statement. “We are asking urgent questions about the responsibility of political art in the current context of the Middle East conflict on the occasion of Nan Goldin’s exhibition, as she stands for political engagement as an activist artist.”
While earlier press releases stated the Berlin chapter of Goldin’s show at Neue Nationalgalerie is curated by Biesenbach and Lisa Botti, their names are no longer attached to the information about the show on the website. “Because of the unique complexities in Berlin, we asked Fredrik Liew, the main curator of the touring retrospective [and Head of Exhibitions & Collection Chief Curator Moderna Museet], to take a more significant role in the museum,” the museum clarified, noting that Biesenbach remains “ultimately responsible for the exhibition.”
“The important Nan Goldin exhibition, which is touring internationally, deserves a place in this city,” added Biesenbach.
Update November 20, 2024, 2 p.m.: This piece has been amended to include comments from Nan Goldin.