Museo d'arte e artigianato Amburgo (MK&G)

With the exhibition "Photo: Hans Hansen," the MK&G is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective to one of the most significant photographers of the post-war era from April 17 to November 1, 2026. Around 220 iconic photographs spanning over six decades will be shown. In international campaigns for Lufthansa, Nikon, Volkswagen, and Erco, among others, Hans Hansen revolutionized product photography from the 1960s onwards and shaped the collective visual memory of entire generations. The exhibition is complemented by works that highlight his close collaboration with designers such as Tapio Wirkkala. Tools, correspondence, sketches, archival material, and selected objects from his private collection also offer deeper insights into his working process. With his most recent series "Analog" (2024), Hansen also focuses on his own photographic means of expression in his unmistakable, objectively minimalist visual language; a new photo series is also being created especially for the exhibition.While the world outside the studio is constantly changing, there is a constant order within the studio: everything has its place. In his still lifes, Hans Hansen reduces objects to their essentials: he arranges, disassembles, and structures forms, colors, and materials. His photographs appear timeless. One of the best-known examples is the photograph of a VW Golf disassembled into around 7,000 individual parts (1988).His works bear an unmistakable signature by directing the gaze with radical clarity onto the everyday world of objects and design – he constantly seeks new visual solutions. Light and shadow, composition, and perspective are central parameters and elementary means with which he continually questions the essence of photography.

Lamine Badian Kouyaté zeigt im Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg seine Pionierarbeit im nachhaltigen Design. Mit Upcycling als künstlerischem Ansatz verbindet XULY.Bët Streetwear und Couture, geprägt von Migration und Erinnerung. Hier erlebst du Mode, die weit mehr als ein Trend ist.

Selected highlights from the MK&G collection, which comprises over 3,000 Chinese objects, illustrate the principles and foundations of Chinese art, such as modular design and the unity of writing and image. Among the works on display are ritual bronzes, imperial porcelain, carved lacquers, as well as painting, calligraphy, and color woodcuts.

The story of Lamine Badian Kouyaté (born 1962 in Bamako, Mali) and his 1991-founded label XULY.Bët is a story of resistance, of vision, and of a love for fashion—shaped by migration, diversity, and a radical idea of sustainability long before that word became a buzzword. Growing up in Bamako, Kouyaté was influenced by his grandmother, who works fabrics and gives them a second chance. For him, this is not a fashion phase; it is an attitude. When he arrives in Paris in the 1990s, he brings exactly this perspective: clothing as memory, resource, and a tool to strengthen identity and express social belonging—at a time when environmental awareness in the European fashion industry was hardly a topic. For Kouyaté, upcycling is an artistic practice. His fashion moves between streetwear and couture, between everyday life and the runway—worn by stars such as Rihanna, Dua Lipa, Halle Berry, and Viola Davis, celebrated in international exhibitions. With guerrilla fashion shows, Kouyaté revolutionizes the Paris fashion scene. In 1994, director Robert Altman pays tribute to him in the film Prêt-à-Porter, with Forrest Whitaker portraying him.

With a new presentation of die Sammlung Ostasien, the MK&G celebrates the enduring inspiration of Japanese design: For the first time, paintings from the Edo period (1615–1868), Buddhist calligraphies, and color woodcuts from Walter Gebhard's private collection, acquired in 2021, are on view. The exhibition unfolds over two floors: In the first part, the paintings enter into a dialogue with ceramics, lacquerware, bamboo baskets, metalworks, and sword fittings from the existing collection.