29/09/2026
TOMORROW Architekturgalerie München !
SOM+art
Art, Architecture, Engineering
30 September – 15 November 2026
Opening on Wednesday, 30 September at 7 pm with:
William Baker, Consulting Partner, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, SOM
Nicola Borgmann, Architekturgalerie München
Marking its 90th anniversary, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill presents the exhibition SOM+art at Architekturgalerie München. The exhibition focuses on the firm’s longstanding collaborations with artists and, through selected projects, explores the interplay between artistic ideas, architectural space, and engineering development.
For more than five decades, SOM has collaborated with leading artists. Early collaborations include projects with Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, Saul Steinberg, and Isamu Noguchi. Later projects involved artists including Pablo Picasso, Harry Bertoia, Henry Moore, Jean Dubuffet, James Turrell, Jenny Holzer, Richard Serra, Jaume Plensa, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, and Janet Echelman.
📷A prominent example is the Chicago Picasso, whose monumental steel structure was realised through close collaboration between Picasso and SOM. More recent projects with Jaume Plensa and Janet Echelman demonstrate how structural development, material research, and form-finding can become part of the artistic process.
SOM+Art draws particular attention to the engineering expertise that often recedes into the background in the finished artwork. Large-scale, kinetic, or apparently suspended works depend on complex structural solutions that make their realisation possible. At the same time, the exhibition shows how collaboration with artists can also expand architectural and engineering thinking within SOM.
The exhibition presents only a selection from the firm’s extensive history of artistic collaborations. It also continues the longstanding relationship between SOM and Architekturgalerie München, which began in 2016 with the exhibition The Engineering of Architecture.