Image: Official exhibition poster, created and distributed by the Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur
Thomas Hirschhorn’s ‘My Atlas’, described as the first major anthological exhibition devoted to the Swiss artist in the last twenty years, will open at the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, Switzerland, on 21 August. The exhibition will be on view from 22 August to 6 December 2026, beginning a new stage in its European tour after its presentation at Museo Helga de Alvear in Cáceres, Spain.
Organised by Museo Helga de Alvear in collaboration with Bündner Kunstmuseum, the Chur presentation is part of a cooperation agreement between the two institutions. The announcement presents the Swiss exhibition as an international extension of a project developed and previously shown by the Spanish museum, rather than as a separate exhibition conceived independently for Chur.
‘My Atlas’ is curated by Sandra Guimarães, identified in the announcement as the director of Museo Helga de Alvear. In Cáceres the show was built around ‘My Atlas’ (2025), a personal reading of the atlas form after Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne, spread across forty-five cardboard panels numbered to forty-three because two of them are doubles. Alongside it were the site-specific ‘Gravity, Mass and Democracy’ (2025), ‘Fake it, Fake it – till you Fake it.’ (2024), shown in Europe for the first time, and a reconfiguration of ‘Power Tools’ (2007) from the Helga de Alvear Collection together with the new ‘Power Tools-Workshop’ (2025). Neither museum has said which of these travel to Chur.
The accompanying statement places particular emphasis on Hirschhorn’s approach to public space and to the institutions that host his work. Guimarães said that the artist is “known for his ambitious projects in the public space and for works that specifically involve the institutions where he exhibits”. She added that the exhibition demonstrates the museum’s ability to present the work and research of significant artists and reflects the direction of its programme.
For Museo Helga de Alvear, the transfer to Switzerland is part of an international outreach strategy extending beyond its home in Cáceres. The museum said the collaboration would allow its exhibition projects to reach new audiences and territories, while also supporting its responsibility to research the Helga de Alvear Collection and to present internationally the work of artists with “a personal language”.
The Chur showing is the first stop on the project's international tour. The museum's own press material gives the exhibition's full title at its Cáceres debut as 'My Atlas # Our Atlas', where it ran from 14 November 2025 to 10 May 2026 and drew 74,501 visitors; the Swiss poster shortens the title to 'My Atlas'. That material describes a survey running from iconic early works of the 1980s, never previously exhibited, to recent pieces made expressly for the Museo Helga de Alvear. Its opening is scheduled for 21 August, with public display beginning the following day and continuing through 6 December 2026.
