iNeue NationalgalerieTiergarten
Fujiko Nakaya: Fog Sculpture in the Sculpture Garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie
This exhibition has ended.
A site-specific fog installation by Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya fills the sculpture garden with ephemeral fog at regular intervals, blending with the sculptures and Mies van der Rohe's architecture.
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On the hour and the half hour, the doors to the sculpture garden shut and pure water fog rolls in from its edges. For eight minutes the sculptures by Henri Laurens, Wolfgang Mattheuer and Alicja Kwade go under and come back, until the cloud lifts out of the garden's centre into the sky.
This is Nakaya's Cult of Mist, made for the garden in 2025 and back by popular demand. Watch it through the 90-metre glass wall on the collection level, which AW Art Mag likened to "an immense moving painting", or step outside before the doors close and stand in it. In dense fog you may not see other visitors, and the ground turns slippery. Ceecee called each formation "a haiku hanging in the air".
Cycles run 11am to 5pm, until 7pm on Thursdays, with the €20 museum ticket (€10 concessions). The mist can affect phones and cameras. It closes on 25 October, after which Berlin supplies its own fog, minus the timetable.
Look for
The view from the glass wall
Look out from the 90-metre glass facade on the collection level as the garden fills and empties like a moving picture.
Standing inside the fog
Enter the garden before a cycle starts and the mist shifts around you, at times a nearly solid volume, at others a thin veil.
The garden sculptures going under
Look for the works by Laurens, Mattheuer and Kwade disappearing into the fog and re-emerging as it thins.
The lift-off
At the end of each sequence the fog drifts in from the edges, gathers in the centre of the garden and rises into the sky.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Going Solo
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You can't plan around a timetable: the fog runs eight-minute cycles and the garden doors shut once one starts.
With kids
The museum asks adults to supervise children closely in the garden: visibility can drop sharply in the fog and the ground gets wet and slippery.
Also at Neue Nationalgalerie
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Image credits
7
- Neue NationalgalerieEvgenii Salganik / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Rubens, Jordaens, van Dyck. Flemish Master DrawingsPhoto: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
- Time Travel in the Old Tiergarten District© Bildarchiv Foto Marburg
- Daniel Chodowiecki, 1726–1801. Images of the Enlightenment in BerlinCourtesy of Gemäldegalerie
- GemäldegalerieOursana / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- KunstgewerbemuseumMarsupium / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Gropius BauManfred Brückels / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0