AM26 Arts and Culture Brochure

In our South Gallery, a parallel exhibition by Peter Doig unites art and music, encouraging visitors to spend more time within the gallery and experience art as a multi-sensory encounter. Artist-designed tables have been placed throughout the space to encourage conversation between visitors, challenging the traditional silence of museums and transforming them into places of social connection, exchange and dialogue. Beyond digital innovation, the creation of physical spaces where people can come together remains equally important. The Serpentine Pavilion programme, now in its 25th year, exemplifies this approach. Each summer, a new pavilion is built outside the gallery, designed by leading or emerging architects. The 2023 pavilion, by Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh, was inspired by the concept of “À table”, an invitation to gather and reflect on our relationship with food, nature and sustainability. Throughout the summer, the space became a vibrant meeting point where hundreds of thousands of people, many strangers, shared ideas, meals and conversations.Creating connections also means forming unexpected alliances. Something that is at the core of what our CEO Bettina Korek and our teams do at the Serpentine. One example is the Serpentine’s collaboration with the gaming platform Fortnite, the artist Kaws and the tech company Acute. Together, we created an exhibition that existed simultaneously in the physical and digital worlds. Within two weeks, more than 152 million people experienced the Serpentine through Fortnite, while tens of thousands of teenagers visited the gallery in person, often bringing their parents, a reversal of the usual museum dynamic. In summer 2025, coinciding with World Play Day on 11 June, the Serpentine and the LEGO Group launched the Play Pavilion, designed by British architect Sir Peter Cook. This interactive public art project celebrates play as a universal human impulse and incorporates LEGO® bricks into its structure, inviting visitors of all ages to build, imagine and explore together. Extending into Kensington Gardens, the pavilion became a joyful, creative environment that welcomed hundreds of thousands of children and families, many visiting a museum for the first time.The potential for collaboration extends beyond art, technology and play. At the Manchester International Festival, we paired 11 contemporary artists with 11 professional footballers. The project asked what art and sport can learn from each other and demonstrated how creativity can transcend traditional boundaries, fostering new forms of teamwork and understanding. Equally vital is the dialogue between the arts, humanities and sciences. Maja Hoffmann’s Luma Foundation exemplifies this through Atelier Luma, a platform that brings together artists, designers and scientists to address ecological and social challenges. These initiatives show that meaningful innovation arises when knowledge is shared across disciplines. As we look to the future, it is also essential to remain connected to the past. In the digital age, access to information has grown, yet collective memory has weakened. Remembering, actively resisting forgetting, has become an act of preservation and creativity. Through curated archive projects, we can explore how history informs innovation. Thinkers such as Édouard Glissant remind us that cultural progress depends on keeping the world’s diverse voices in conversation. The late poet and artist Etel Adnan, who worked across painting, poetry, film and journalism, embodied this spirit of connection. In one of my many conversations with her, she said: “The world needs togetherness, not separation; it needs a common future, not isolation; it needs love, not suspicion.” Her words continue to guide and inform. Whether through art, architecture, technology, or play, our aim must be to create spaces, both real and imagined, where people can come together, share ideas and build a more connected, compassionate, and creative future. Hans Ulrich Obrist is a 2026 Cultural Leader Image: Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives - Chapter 1: Édouard Glissant, Luma Arles, 2021. Photo: Arthur Fouray(Opposite top) Image: Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh. © Lina Ghotmeh - Architecture. Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy of Serpentine Galleries(Opposite bottom) Image: KAWS x Fortnite, Serpentine & Acute Art, 2022 © Epic GamesImage: Hans Ulrich Obrist. Photo: ©Elias Hassos for DLD/Hubert Burda Media Arts and Culture Programme Arts and Culture Programme Annual Meeting 2026 Annual Meeting 202618 19