William Kentridge is a great magician of drawing. He creates his own world of moving figures on paper and animates them in films and on stage. We encounter them again in prints, sculptures and tapestries. To mark his 70th birthday, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Museum Folkwang in Essen are celebrating this global star from Johannesburg with a cross-collection exhibition festival from September 2025.
The starting point of Kentridge's work is the South African apartheid regime and its overcoming. The universal questions of oppression and exclusion, of rebellion and self-empowerment, in the tension between triumphs and lamentations, are up for debate. Dresden is celebrating Kentridge at several venues simultaneously.
In the Residenzschloss (until February 15, 2026) , the Kupferstich-Kabinett is fulfilling his special wish to show his rich prints. This medium expresses Kentridge's very own interest in creative collaboration particularly intensively. Whether huge or small-format, radically experimental in technique, the woodcuts and etchings deal with social and individual processes of change. With an eye on the ambivalence of triumphs and lamentations in the past and present, there are further works scattered throughout the Residenzschloss that show connections to Dresden and its art treasures.
In the Albertinum (until January 4, 2026), Kentridge's monumental masterpiece More Sweetly Play the Dance, a cinematically moving procession of heroes and outsiders between parade and dance of death, meets the Dresden tourist attraction of the Fürstenzug. On thousands of Meissen porcelain tiles, it depicts a procession of all Saxon rulers over a length of 100 meters. The preparatory drawing in the same format will be restored for the exhibition and exhibited for the first time. Caspar David Friedrich's Large Enclosure also inspires Kentridge to engage in dialog.
The Puppet Theater Collection in Dresden's Kraftwerk Mitte (until 28 June 2026) will host the Centre for the Less Good Idea from Johannesburg, founded by Kentridge, for a whole year, bringing the historical puppets in the collection back to life with experimental and interdisciplinary works.
Please note the different durations of the three exhibitions and check https://www.skd.museum/ausstellungen/william-kentridge/ for daily updates.