KATZEN!

One of the objects here is a campaign cutout reading "Cat Ladies for Kamala 2024". In that US election "childless cat lady" was meant as an insult, and women turned the cat into a feminist badge, much as suffragists did around 1900. Cats, women and power is the thread the whole show follows, from the Egyptian goddess who protected mothers to the black cat as the witch's companion.

The objects come from the museum's world collections: Egyptian goddess statues, Japanese demon masks, South American jaguar figures, waving maneki-neko. Contemporary work by Carolee Schneemann, Taewon Ahn and Chéri Chérin hangs among them, and a media strand runs from 1890s cat films to AI-generated cats. You also get Hamburg's own cat content, sent in by households before opening. ZDF called it small but fine.

If your camera roll is mostly your cat, some of your neighbours got theirs into a museum. It closes on 29 November. Entry is €10, free on Thursdays from 16:00, when the museum stays open until 21:00.