Image: Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt’s Städel Museum and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung are preparing a major exhibition devoted to Mary Magdalene, a figure who has moved through centuries of art and religious interpretation as apostle, sinner, penitent, saint and, in modern readings, a self-determined woman and point of identification. Titled 'Maria Magdalena. Sin. Pray. Love.', the show opens on 17 September 2026 and runs through 17 January 2027 at the Städel Museum.
The museum describes the project as the first comprehensive exhibition in the German-speaking world dedicated to Mary Magdalene. Rather than presenting her as a fixed icon, the display traces how her image has been continuously reshaped from the earliest biblical traditions to the present. The focus is on the way successive eras projected their own ideas about the body, faith and social roles onto her figure, making her image history a record of changing cultural values as much as of religious devotion.
According to the museum, the exhibition brings together more than 100 works from the Middle Ages to the present, including paintings, sculptures and prints. It draws on key works from the collections of the Städel Museum and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung and adds significant loans from international institutions. These include five works from the National Gallery in London, as well as works from the Berlin Gemäldegalerie, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre in Paris, the Vatican Museums and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
The exhibition will include art by both women and men across a wide span of periods and media. The museum highlights works by artists such as Lavinia Fontana, Elisabetta Sirani, Luisa Roldán, Lotte Laserstein, Kiki Smith, Marlene Dumas and Nieves González, alongside pieces by Albrecht Dürer, Pedro de Mena, Guercino, Georges de la Tour, Claude Lorrain, Arnold Böcklin, Max Beckmann and David LaChapelle. The selection is intended to show the emotional and artistic range of Magdalene imagery, beginning with contemporary perspectives and moving back through the centuries.
The curators, Bastian Eclercy and Stefan Roller, say the extraordinary variety of Magdalene depictions makes her image history especially revealing. The show is presented as a joint exhibition of the Städel Museum and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung. The website also notes a related public programme for the exhibition, beginning with 'SinnBilder: Die erste Zeugin' on 17 September at 20.30.
The exhibition will also be supported by a digital digitorial available from 15 September 2026 and by an audio guide in German and English at the start of the run. The museum lists early-bird tickets for 'Maria Magdalena. Sin. Pray. Love.' and gives the exhibition dates as 17 September 2026 to 17 January 2027.
