The French luxury goods billionaire François Pinault is showing works from his vast contemporary art collection for the first time in Germany in the exhibition Dancing with Myself at the Museum Folkwang in Essen (7 October-15 January 2017). 

More than 100 works by artists such as Roni Horn, Rodney Graham, Steve McQueen, Ulrike Rosenbach and Lili Reynaud-Dewar focus on the idea of “self-representation”, with an entire room dedicated to the US photographer Cindy Sherman. 

Bruce Nauman’s vast video installation For Beginners (All the Combinations of the Thumb and Finger) (2010) and Maurizio Cattelan’s ghoulish, sculptural self-portrait We (2010) are also included. The show, say the organisers, “is a wild, playful, poetic, and political dance through contemporary art moving from the late 1960s up to our own time”. Works from the Folkwang Museum collection, which houses a significant collection of 19th-century German and French paintings, will also feature.

Pinault continues to show his works outside Venice where he runs two galleries at the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana. The collection has toured to Moscow and Seoul, while earlier this year, he announced plans to open a new museum in the heart of Paris to show his collection and stage contemporary art shows. 

In a deal struck with the city, Pinault will take over the historical Bourse du Commerce (commodity stock exchange) building, which is close to the Louvre. The opening is scheduled for the end of 2018.