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Wild at Art:
Family Gathering
at BMW Welt

It’s always lovely to come home. Especially when the whole family gets together. And when, for the very first time, absolutely every member of the family is there, it really is something special. That’s exactly what’s happening from 29 July to 31 August at BMW Welt in Munich. In the exhibition “BMW Art Cars – 20 Artists, 50 Years of Innovation. Reunited at BMW WELT.”, all the BMW Art Cars will be on display together in one place for the first time.

  • Photos
    BMW AG

Family reunions are a bit of a mixed bag. Especially when it comes to large families. Somehow, there’s always someone missing because other commitments take precedence. It’s no different for the BMW Art Cars family. Over the past year and a half in particular, the individual family members have been kept busy all over the world: from Sweden to South Africa, from the USA to Australia. It was the largest exhibition project in the history of this collection. And how do you mark its conclusion? By bringing all twenty family members together for the first time in their home: BMW Welt in Munich.

20 exhibits
spanning 50 years
The exhibition opens on Thursday 28 July and will be open to the public from Friday 29 July until Monday 31 August. The twenty exhibits, spanning fifty years, offer a cross-section of the art history of this half-century.

From minimalism to Pop Art, from magical realism to abstraction, from conceptual art to digital art – it feels as though everything that has been happening in the art world during this period is represented here. What’s more, each Art Car tells a story of the artist’s distinctive style, technological developments and the social context of the period in which it was created.

Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson
Esther Mahlangu
Esther Mahlangu
David Hockney
David Hockney
"Hervé, go and win! But drive carefully."
Alexander Calder, BMW Art Car #1, 1975, with Hervé Poulain before the start of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The race ended after 73 laps due to a broken constant-velocity joint.

The BMW Art Car Collection began in 1975, when the French racing driver and art dealer Hervé Poulain, in collaboration with Jochen Neerpasch – then head of BMW’s motorsport division – invited the artist Alexander Calder to transform a racing car into a work of art. The result was a BMW 3.0 CSL, which competed in the 1975 Le Mans 24-hour race and became a crowd favourite. 

"Mobile museums would be a brilliant idea. This vehicle has made a dream of mine come true. I’d love to design ten more just like it."
Robert Rauschenberg, BMW Art Car No. 6, 1986

Over the past fifty years, the collection has grown to twenty works and includes pieces by renowned artists such as Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Esther Mahlangu, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Cao Fei and Julie Mehretu, each of whom has brought their own vision and distinctive style to the project

“I realised that the whole Art Car project is about creating something new, being inventive and pushing boundaries to see what’s possible.”
Julie Mehretu, BMW Art Car #20, 2024
#16 – Olafur Eliasson, BMW H2R, 2007
#16 – Olafur Eliasson, BMW H2R, 2007

Although every Art Car is in its own right worth a trip into the world of BMW, the exhibition still has one particularly noteworthy highlight to offer: Olafur Eliasson’s BMW Art Car #16 is on display as a frozen installation. This has only happened three times since its world premiere just under twenty years ago. 

And if you need any more reasons to visit: simply browse through our gallery.

1/19
BMW Art Cars – 20 Artists, 50 Years of ­Innovation.
Reunited at BMW WELT.

29 July to 31 August 2026
daily from 9 am to 6 pm
BMW Welt, Munich


→ Click here for the BMW Art Cars exhibition

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