Image: Lenbachhaus, Munich
Lenbachhaus in Munich will host ‘Taking Refuge’, a queer short-film screening presented by the XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin, on 6 August 2026. The free evening programme will take place in the museum garden as part of ‘Buntes Garten Ciao’, the Lenbachhaus summer initiative focused on outdoor, participatory events.
According to the museum’s programme listing, the screening begins at 9 pm and runs for about 90 minutes. Admission is free and no registration is required. Viewers will have free seating on the garden chairs, with additional space on the lawn; if the weather turns bad, the screening will move indoors to the Lenbachhaus’s Laterne and mediation rooms. The museum also notes that the main entrance is barrier-free and that the garden can be reached barrier-free through the Luisenstraße gate.
The event marks a return visit by the XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin to Lenbachhaus. The museum’s newsletter notes that the festival is coming back for another evening after a June short-film programme, ‘Queer Blossoming’. For ‘Taking Refuge’, curator Merle Groneweg has assembled seven short films in dialogue with ‘Buntes Garten Ciao’, a summer project at Lenbachhaus that frames the museum garden as a site for performances, workshops, walks, dance, theatre, karaoke and other open-air formats.
The programme description situates the films around questions of agriculture, archive footage, geology, greenhouse gardening, labour and land relations. Lenbachhaus says the selection looks at the power to name and categorise, to colonise and dominate, and to exploit and profit, while also tracing how nature can become a place of refuge. The texts attached to the individual films extend those concerns across settings including a botanical garden in Lisbon, a Chinampa in Xochimilco, an Ecuadorian rose farm, and landscapes shaped by migration, climate pressure and historical violence.
The line-up includes ‘Tejimola-he Moi (I am Tejimola)’ by Aditav Dowerah, ‘The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing’ by Theo Panagopoulos, ‘Lolo’ by Ana Gutiérrez Salgado, ‘as a bird that briefly perches’ by Dorothy Cheung, ‘Swan Lake’ by Stella Traub, ‘From Ecuador With Love’ by Jonathan Brunner, and ‘Rezbotanik’ by Pedro Gonçalves Ribeiro. The works are presented in their original languages with English subtitles.
The museum’s summer calendar places ‘Taking Refuge’ within the broader ‘Buntes Garten Ciao’ series, which runs from 23 April to 30 August 2026. On 6 August, the screening is scheduled after ‘extra+ feat. Radio 80000’, an open-house evening with drinks and music from 6 pm to 10 pm. For the film event, the museum specifies the garden as the meeting point and lists the programme as a free screening in the open air at Lenbachhaus Garden, Munich.
