Portrait of Nan Goldin 1982

Nan Goldin, Memory Lost, 2019-2021 Installation view at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery

Nan Goldin

This Will Not End Well

29.10 2022 – 26.2 2023

Stockholm

Nan Goldin is one of the most high-profile and controversial artists of our time. The retrospective “This Will Not End Well” is presented in six unique rooms. Experience her works as slideshows and films set to sound and music, where stories about love, intimacy, addiction, and loss take place on the screens.

Essay by Curator Fredrik Liew

“Nan Goldin’s love of slideshows is based on the medium’s conduciveness to constant reediting and updating to reflect her changing view of the world. She has never shown the same version of The Ballad twice, as it con­tinues to evolve.”

Read Fredrik Liew’s essay about Nan Goldin and the exhibition “This Will Not End Well” on our Exhibition Guide.

No photography or filming allowed

A message from Nan Goldin before you visit the exhibition:

“Please experience my work rather than record it. I trust that you will respect me and the people in the pictures and won’t share any of my photos or videos in this exhibition on the internet, including any social media platform”.

Accessibility

The exhibition contains dark galleries, some with stairs.

For those with special needs, please feel free to contact the information desk before you visit the exhibition, our museum hosts will then gladly assist you.

Read more about the accessibility in the museum here: Access

Nan Goldin, Couple in bed, Chicago (1977) © Nan Goldin
Woman at a table in a bar
Nan Goldin, Cookie at Tin Pan Alley, New York City (1983) © Nan Goldin
I have always wanted to be a filmmaker. My slideshows are films made up of stills. – Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin has made an unforgettable mark on our time with candid and tender snapshots of intimacy and relationships, everyday life, wild parties, and the struggle between addiction and independence. “This Will Not End Well” is the first exhibition that embraces Goldin’s original vision of how her work is to be experienced. By focusing on slideshows and video installations the exhibition goes back to the roots of Goldin’s artistic practice.

A woman sits in a bathtub
Nan Goldin, Amanda at the sauna, Hotel Savoy, Berlin (1983) © Nan Goldin

Breakthrough in the 1980s

Born in Washington D.C., Nan Goldin started her career in New York in the early 1980s. She presented her work in nightclubs, underground cinemas and film festivals. Live in front of an audience, she showed images organized in slideshows with multiple projectors, set to an eclectic soundtrack.

Her magnum opus work “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, documents Goldin’s bohemian, creative social circle and their world in Provincetown, in Lower Manhattan, Berlin, and London during the 1970s and 80s until recently.

Over the past 50 years, Goldin has produced a dozen separate slideshows with thousands of images. She has added new elements to her works over time, such as moving images, voices, and archival material.

Making slide shows gives me the luxury of constantly reediting to reflect my changing view of the world. – Nan Goldin
Still from three-channel video Sisters, Saints and Sibyls
Nan Goldin, Still from three-channel video Sisters, Saints and Sibyls, 2004-2022 © Nan Goldin

Civic engagement

In Nan Goldin’s art, we encounter everything from drug addiction and the darkest sides of withdrawal, as in “Memory Lost” (2019-2020), to family trauma and suicide, as in “Sister, Saints and Sibyls” (2004-2022).

Goldin has always been deeply involved with social issues such as gender, mental health, addiction, and AIDS. In 2017 she founded P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), a direct action group that aims at holding the wealthy Sackler family accountable for igniting the opioid overdose epidemic that has swept the USA in recent years.

The Sackler family, who are major donors to several prominent international museums around the world, have seen their name erased from many of these institutions due to pressure from P.A.I.N. The work “Memory Lost” is dedicated to P.A.I.N.

A horse against a blurred foreground
Nan Goldin, My horse Roma, Valley of the Queens, Luxor, Egypt (2003) © Nan Goldin
a sky
Nan Goldin, Sunset like hair, Sète, France (2003) © Nan Goldin

Specially designed buildings

In the exhibition, Nan Goldin’s slideshows and video installations are presented in six unique buildings. The buildings are designed by architect Hala Wardé, an architect who frequently works with Goldin.

For this exhibition, Hala Wardé has created what can be described as a special home for each work. Each building is designed based on the artwork that is presented inside. Together the buildings form a village of slideshows.

Color image projected on the wall, two benches in the foreground of the room
Nan Goldin, Sirens, 2019-2021 Installation view at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery
A woman at a kitchen table
Nan Goldin, Gina at Bruce’s dinner party, NYC (1991) © Nan Goldin
A person with a hat and a pearl necklace lights a cigarette for a character in a painting
Nan Goldin, Christmas at The Other Side, Boston (1972) © Nan Goldin

International tour

After the exhibition at Moderna Museet “This Will Not End” will embark on an international tour.

Under the auspices of Moderna Museet, it will be presented at museums including Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (7 October – 28 January 2024), Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (23 November 2024 – 9 March 2025), Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan (10 October 2025 – 15 February 2025) and Réunion des musées nationaux, Grand Palais, in Paris (11 April – 20 September 2026).

A child with an elephant mask
Nan Goldin, Michele’s daughter in her elephant mask, Boston (1985) © Nan Goldin
A group sits next to water and has a picnic
Nan Goldin, Picnic on the Esplanade, Boston (1973) © Nan Goldin

Images

A person entering one of the rooms included in "Nan Goldin – This Will Not End Well". Another person stands further back in the picture and looks at a work text
Nan Goldin/Hala Wardé, Installation view "Nan Goldin – This Will Not End Well", 2022 Photo: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet
Between the rooms in the exhibition "Nan Goldin – This Will Not End Well". A person stands at the back of the picture
Nan Goldin/Hala Wardé, Installation view "Nan Goldin – This Will Not End Well", 2022 Photo: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet
A person steps into one of the rooms in the exhibition "Nan Goldin – This Will Not End Well"
Nan Goldin/Hala Wardé, Installation view "Nan Goldin – This Will Not End Well", 2022 Photo: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet
A group of people stand between the exhibition rooms in "Nan Goldin – This Will Not End Well"
Nan Goldin/Hala Wardé, Installation view "Nan Goldin – This Will Not End Well", 2022 Photo: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet

More about this exhibition