Installation view of “Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea” in Saint Louis Art Museum Sculpture Hall. © Anselm Kiefer.

Dan Bradica

Dismiss St. Louis at your own peril.

Two great rivers. A Great Rivers Greenway. One of the world’s most recognizable architectural monuments. Eleven World Series championships.

Chuck Berry, Miles Davis, and Nelly. And Josephine Baker. And John Hamm.

The blues and barbecue and beer.

The second largest Mardi Gras celebration in America. One of the nation’s best Little Italy’s. One of the world’s great botanic gardens; and urban parks–you should have seen it before the tornado.

A collection of free museums and attractions unparalleled for a city its size.

One of those free museums, the Saint Louis Art Museum, presents a landmark exhibition for Anselm Kiefer (German; b. 1945) through January 25, 2026. Not simply an exhibition of Anselm Kiefer paintings and sculptures in St. Louis, but an exhibition of Anselm Kiefer St. Louis paintings in St. Louis.

Anselm Kiefer In St. Louis

Anselm Kiefer, one of the world’s foremost contemporary artists of the past 50 years, first came to St. Louis in 1991. The Saint Louis Art Museum had acquired its second Kiefer artwork, a sculpture, Bruch der Gefäße (Breaking of the Vessels) (1990), and the artist accompanied the artwork to oversee installation. On that visit, Kiefer traveled by boat to the newly constructed Melvin Price Lock and Dam just north of the city on the Mississippi River, past its confluence with the Missouri River.

The experience stuck with him and, decades later, became a subject of renewed interest. Rivers. Rivers and borders. In Germany and America.

“The Rhine, for Anselm Kiefer, has always been a vessel of memory of trauma and destruction and beauty and histories,” Min Jung Kim, the Barbara B. Taylor Director of the Saint Louis Art Museum, told Forbes.com. “Similarly, with the Mississippi, it sustained for centuries indigenous cultures. It was the backbone of a new nation when the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the country. It was the engine of 19th century commerce, and it remains immortalized as a cultural metaphor through song and folklore and literature. (In this exhibition, Kiefer) brings these two important, culturally specific rivers that would normally be divided by continents and seas together in visual dialog in this space, in this scale.”

“This space” is the Saint Louis Art Museum’s soaring Sculpture Hall, cresting at 78-feet and larger on the floor than a basketball court. “This scale,” Kiefer, renowned for the size of his paintings, goes gonzo; four artworks on view in the Hall are 30-feet tall.

The artworks were purpose-painted by Kiefer in response to his time in St. Louis and with the intention of being displayed in SLAM’s Sculpture Hall.

“(Kiefer) came to St Louis again in November of 2023 and we walked the galleries, and at one point we stood up on the (Sculpture Hall) balcony looking down and he said, ‘This is an amazing space,’” Jung Kim remembers.

Her professional relationship with Kiefer goes back more than 30 years. She visited Kiefer in Europe earlier in 2023, hoping to convince him to put a show together for the U.S., and for SLAM to be the host.

“As we were standing up on that balcony, looking down, he said, ‘Min, where could we envision doing an exhibition?’ I said, ‘Anselm, any and or all of these exhibition spaces could be open.’ He said, ‘Well, this space is so amazing. And thinking about the Mississippi and the Rhine, how about if I were to envision doing some work here,’” Jung Kim, who curated the exhibition, continued. “He went back into the studio and immediately started working. Three to four months later, I went to go visit (again) and he had already started working on these two paintings.”

Those two paintings are Missouri, Mississippi (2024) and Lumpeguin, Cigwe, Animiki (2025).

“These two paintings are of the Mississippi River, and as you can see, he has such a vivid memory of that experience, of the Mississippi, the sheer force, the scale, he remembers in this small boat going through these locks and dams, and you see many of these components,” Jung Kim said.

Lumpeguin, Cigwe, Animiki depicts the since-demolished Clark Bridge on the Mississippi River. Its title refers to spirit beings from indigenous Anishinaabe and Wabanaki people. When thinking about the rivers and the Louisiana Purchase and the lands along them, including St. Louis–the Gateway to the West–remember they were purchased from France, but stolen from Native people.

Sculpture Hall continues that legacy.

The building was constructed as part of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. That event was a celebration of the importance of the Mississippi River in the ongoing industrial development of the United States and colonization of the North American continent. It was referred to as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition recognizing the centennial of the purchase/theft. Sculpture Hall was the only building from the Fair designed to be permanent.

Green And Gold

Anselm Kiefer, German, born 1945; “Missouri, Mississippi,” 2024; emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, sediment of electrolysis and collage of canvas on canvas; 30 feet 10 1/16 inches x 27 feet 6 11/16 inches. Collection of the artist and courtesy Gagosian 2025.310; © Anselm Kiefer.

Nina Slavcheva

Kiefer’s monumental paintings in Sculpture Hall were created with a striking and unusual combination of sediment of electrolysis, verdigris–oxidized copper–gold leaf, metal objects, and oil paint. Gobs of it. The surface of the paintings are layered so heavily in smears of oil paint and so recently completed visitors can smell it if. Without any barriers separating guests from the artwork, get close and take a whiff.

“The greens are a relatively new palette. This is where he is so astonishingly innovative,” Jung Kim said. “Sometimes he will use lead, but more often will be using copper, and he will submerge it in a sulfur bath, and then he’ll run an electric current through it, and through this electrolysis, it will go through this chemical reaction and process of corrosion, and it will develop this beautiful patina. This verdigris is sometimes used directly–sometimes he’ll submerge canvases itself–but oftentimes the corrosion will then sort of settle to the bottom of this bath and he’ll collect it, he’ll mix it with shellac and paint, and he’ll apply it and so you get this really lush tactility and extraordinary color.”

A crusty, metallic, oxidized, crumbling, sea foam green surface color and texture. Fascinating. The surfaces of Kiefer’s paintings double as landscapes themselves. Relief maps.

The artwork for which the exhibition takes its name, “Becoming the Sea,” is centered in Sculpture Hall. It’s inscribed “for Gregory Corso,” and includes lines from an unpublished poem by Corso, an American Beat poet.

“’Spirit is life, like a river, unafraid of becoming the sea,’” Jung Kim reads. “It ties in this theme of rivers that was initially inspired by these five monumental paintings in Sculpture Hall, but it becomes a theme throughout the exhibition acting as a metaphor for memory, for transformation, and for the passage of time.”

Kiefer turned 80 this year. He’s a river nearing the end of his path, preparing to enter the sea. Unafraid.

German Art At The Saint Louis Art Museum

Installation view of “Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea” in Saint Louis Art Museum Sculpture Hall.

Chadd Scott

Kiefer hasn’t had a major U.S. museum exhibition in over 20 years. SLAM makes for the ideal location. The institution’s history with the artist goes all the way back to 1983 when it organized “Expressions: New Art from Germany,” a traveling show introducing American audiences to Neo-Expressionism, including works by Kiefer.

In 1987, the museum acquired its first Kiefer painting, Brennstäbe (Fuel Rods) (1984-1987). It is on view in the show which continues beyond Sculpture Hall. Around 40 works from the 1970s to the present, in addition to the monumental, site-specific paintings, can be seen.

Free.

In fabulous Forest Park with extended hours until 9:00 PM on Fridays.

SLAM’s roots are with German art and artists.

The museum possesses one of the largest and most diverse collections of 20th-century German art in the U.S. That collection was jump-started by artist Max Beckmann’s (1884-1950) arrival in St. Louis in 1947 for a teaching position at Washington University.

In 1950, SLAM presented the first exhibition of Beckmann’s work in this country. Following that exhibition, St. Louis-based collector Morton D. May began acquiring Beckmann artworks, building what would become the world’s largest collection of the artist’s paintings.

When May died in 1983, he bequeathed his collection to the museum, further motivating SLAM to prioritize acquisitions of important works by contemporary German artists. Totaling more than 2,500 objects by artists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the museum’s holdings include strengths in German Expressionism—including paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Käthe Kollwitz, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Max Pechstein—and postwar German art, including important works by Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, A.R. Penck and Gerhard Richter.

And Kiefer.

As guests walk from or to Sculpture Hall from the rest of the exhibition, they pass directly through SLAM’s gallery hung with Beckmann masterpieces. Connecting with this lineage appealed greatly to Kiefer when thinking about SLAM as a potential exhibition site.

Powell Hall

Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra Powell Hall auditorium balcony view.

Sam Fentress

Not to be outdone by Sculpture Hall at SLAM, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Powell Hall goes full grand European palace with gold leaf, Italian crystal chandeliers, and royal red carpet. Following a two-year, $140 million renovation and expansion, Powell Hall looks even better than it did when first opened in 1925.

Built as a vaudeville theater, the National Register of Historic Places building had become woefully inadequate for one of the world’s greatest symphony orchestras. Musicians changing and preparing in dingy bathrooms. Flooding. Cramped hallways. Limited storage space. The visitor experience–aside from the superior audio quality and caliber of musicians–wasn’t much better. Long lines for the toilets, concessions, and box office.

Those inconveniences are now a thing of the past with full dressing and rehearsal rooms for musicians, multiple production studios, and a fully updated backstage area. Visitors enjoy three public entrances, multiple concession areas, updated restrooms, and new, larger seats, featuring more legroom, all without sacrificing any of the sound quality or decorative splendor of the original Hall. It’s ADA accessible. Hallways and aisleways are wider.

Ten painters spent a year repainting the performance theater. It shines like a pearl.

Free Art Around St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri, USA – May 27, 2015: Ceiling of the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis in St. Louis, Missouri

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Art lovers visiting St. Louis will also enjoy the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University adjacent to Forest Park. Be sure to admire its Max Ernst painting.

One block from Powell Hall, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Pulitzer Arts Foundation are side-by-side. Spend time with the city-scaled Richard Serra steel sculpture. At the other end of the Grand Center Arts District past Powell Hall, hit Kranzberg Arts Foundation’s Legends Gallery for an exhibition of Chuck D prints. Yes, Public Enemy Chuck D. Across the street is the Walls on Washington mural park.

In town, the stupefying Cathedral Basilica St. Louis has the largest mosaic tile collection outside of Russia. Out of town, Laumeier Sculpture Park has big sculptures and lawns perfect for enjoying with kids.

How much would you pay for all of this?

Free. Free. Free. Free. Free. Free. Free.

If you must spend money, you can do so on handcrafted glass art in the gift shop at Third Degree Glass.

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