Come October 18, visitors who enter the Saint Louis Art Museum’s Sculpture Hall will be immersed in the work of Anselm Kiefer, the German artist whose 60-year career is captured, in part, by the new exhibition Becoming the Sea, on view through January 25, 2026.
Towering works—around 30 feet tall—will fill the space’s alcoves with scenes inspired by the Mississippi and Rhine rivers. Custom systems will bring works into the museum and install them in the hall, and new lighting will be added to highlight gold leaf and vibrant verdigris.
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“[Kiefer] comes back to rivers and bodies of water time and time again, throughout his almost 60-year career,” says Melissa Venator, SLAM’s assistant curator of modern art, who assisted museum director Min Jung Kim in curating Becoming the Sea. “There’s this whole imaginative world around the river. It’s part of our national myths and stories.”
Those myths are apparent in the works on display in Becoming the Sea, which marks Kiefer’s first U.S. retrospective in 20 years. The exhibition was created especially for SLAM and overseen by Kiefer—the 80-year-old artist did everything from selecting display tables to creating site-specific works inspired by the confluence region and indigenous water spirits.
“Anselm has a vision for this whole experience. From the time that you walk in the front door, you are in his world,” Venator says.
Beyond Sculpture Hall, the exhibition will continue in the galleries usually reserved for the museum’s contemporary collection. Frequent visitors will already be familiar with Kiefer’s work thanks to “Breaking of the Vessels” in Sculpture Hall (which will remain covered during Becoming the Sea) and “Fuel Rods,” which will join more than 30 works on loan from other collections and museums as part of the landmark exhibition.
Kiefer’s scale makes putting together a comprehensive review of his work difficult. The prolific artist produces life-size sculptures and works that fill entire walls. In fact, a doorway in one of the exhibition’s largest galleries had to be removed to accommodate the length of one painting. But, working directly with Kiefer, Kim and Venator have crafted an exhibition that communicates the breadth of his work. Some galleries have clear themes—autobiographical works, war imagery—while others are devoted to works that simply hang well together. In almost every case, the works are open to interpretation. Kiefer is not an artist who relishes explanation, and Becoming the Sea will be a “low-interpretation environment.”
“So often, there’s no absolute meaning, and that’s the point,” Venator says. “There are all of these overlapping references that have very particular and specific meanings for Kiefer, and we can decode some of them, but that’s not what the art is. What the artist really wants is for you to stand in front of this work to connect with it in whatever way that makes sense to you.”
That’s not to say that folks will be left completely bereft of context. The museum will offer a free visitor’s guide that contains key information about Kiefer’s references, unique materials, and processes, as well as engagement activities and thoughtful prompts to help demystify the art.
“Attaching an easy explanation to any of these paintings would be to fundamentally misunderstand the artist’s practice. There’s not meant to be an easy interpretation,” Venator says. “He doesn’t like to provide easy explanations to his art because the success is for people who know nothing about it to connect to it.”
Understanding Anselm
Anselm Kiefer is a somewhat elusive artist—he rarely discusses his practice and prefers not to be filmed at work. But in the months ahead, the Saint Louis Art Museum will offer some exciting opportunities to those who want to learn more about the artist.
The Becoming the Sea exhibition catalog, which will be released in December, features a rare English translation of a lecture in which Kiefer discusses his process. “He’ll talk about his practice often in very vague terms, but when he sat down and wrote this lecture, it really is all about what motivates him as an artist,” says curator Melissa Venator. “It’s the clearest formulation of that I’ve seen.”
The museum will also host several free screenings of documentaries Anselm Kiefer in Barjac and Anselm, which both feature rare footage of the artist at work. Wim Wenders’ 2023 film Anselm will be shown in 3D for a uniquely immersive experience.
Visitors can also take advantage of drop-in tours and lectures throughout the exhibition’s run, but those interested in the logistics involved in showing such massive works will want to snag tickets to A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea on January 8 (members only) and January 9, 2026.
