From October 29, 2025, to March 15, 2026, the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum will present the German premiere of AMAZÔNIA by Sebastião Salgado, one of the world’s most celebrated photographers. The exhibition was conceived and curated by Lélia Wanick-Salgado. Trained as an architect and urban planner, she was for decades the artistic partner and wife of the recently deceased Brazilian photographer. AMAZÔNIA turns its gaze to the rainforest and the Indigenous communities that shape and protect it. Salgado’s photographs unite monumental landscapes with compelling portraits, revealing both the beauty and the vulnerability of the Amazon region. Interviews with Indigenous leaders, shamans, and activists further open a window onto their perspectives on this threatened ecosystem. The near-simultaneous opening of the exhibition with the UN Climate Change Conference COP30 in Belém underscores its immediacy and relevance.
Sebastião Salgado und Lélia Wanick Salgado © Yann Arthus Bertrand
The architect and curator, and one of the most important photographers of our time, have been working together for decades. Together they conceived the AMAZÔNIA exhibition and founded the Instituto Terra in 1998-a model project for reforestation and the protection of endangered ecosystems.
The accompanying program places Indigenous voices at the center – voices that are often overlooked in global climate debates. Indigenous artists, activists, and thinkers from the nine countries of the Amazon region bring their perspectives to the forefront. Through readings, debates, workshops, and films, the program addresses climate justice, solidarity-based economies, COP30, art, urban realities, cosmologies,
and the rights of nature.
It connects international perspectives with local realities in Cologne. The program is aimed at children and families, young people, schools, communities, students, and all those interested. Cologne’s communities are actively involved so that global perspectives and local experiences meet. In this way, the RJM becomes not just a place where Indigenous perspectives are “exhibited,” but one where they are actively represented – a space for exchange, learning, and imagining a shared future.
A space for young voices, social media and culture. Topics include urban life, Indigenous rap, films by Indigenous women filmmakers, the climate crisis and alternative ways of living. On Thursdays and weekends, workshops, listening sessions and formats of youth culture invite participation – together with South American communities from Cologne. THE FUTURE IS INDIGENOUS.
For four months everything here revolves around nature, climate and the future. Every weekend, children from the age of 6 and their families can paint, craft, write, watch films, read books and take part in workshops to creatively explore solutions for tomorrow. At the centre grows a wish tree that makes children’s hopes and sense of responsibility for a just future visible.
In the RJM’s permanent exhibition, artists from the Amazon region expand the exhibition AMAZÔNIA. Through video, music, photography and painting, they address identity, urbanity and spirituality, point to destroyed habitats and a threatened future – and make their struggles and new ways of seeing the world and the future tangible. THE FUTURE IS INDIGENOUS.
Climate Justice Instead of Exploitation – Cologne-Rio City Partnership Association invites you
Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Köln
Bibiana Jiménez / XXTanzTheater: „La Pola – Ontologies of Women, Movement and Decoloniality“
Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Köln
Grand Opening of SPACE4KIDS
Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Köln
Tuesday to Sunday: 10 am – 6 pm
Thursday: 10 am – 8 pm
Every first Thursday of the month: 10 am – 10 pm – free admission (for visitors from Cologne)
Open on public holidays (including Mondays) as on Sundays
On weekends: Hosts at the AMAZÔNIA exhibition
Every first Thursday: varied evening program
From November 29: Space4Kids – Kids4Climate, every weekend – 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free admission
Audio guide in German – available for hire or as an MP3 download.
An accompanying brochure is available for the exhibition (€6)
Closed on Mondays
Closed on 24/25/31 December 2025 and 1 January 2026
Closed for Carnival (February 12, 2026 and, February 16, 2026)
Prices
Single ticket for the AMAZONIA special exhibition: €15, reduced price: €12
• Combined ticket for the AMAZONIA special exhibition and permanent exhibition: €18, reduced price: €15
• Group ticket for AMAZONIA special exhibition for 10 or more people: €12 per person
• Group ticket for AMAZONIA special exhibition & permanent exhibition for 10 or more people: €15 per person
Guided tours
Every Saturday and on the first Thursday of the month (Cologne Day), the Cologne Museum Service offers public guided tours for adults. Family tours are offered on Sundays. Booking of tours and workshops for school classes, groups, and individual visitors.
Detailed information about the guided tours at: museenkoeln.de | Events
Bookings at: service.museumsdienst@stadt-koeln.de
Tram stop Neumarkt (2 minutes on foot)
KVB lines 1, 3, 4, 9, 16, 18 and bus lines 136, 146
7.11.25
7:00-9:00 p.m.
Climate Justice Instead of Exploitation – Cologne-Rio City Partnership Association invites you
Climate change is revealing its destructive power worldwide — throughdroughts, floods, and extreme weather events. Yet, its causes and consequences are unevenly distributed.
While communities in the Amazon defend their habitats from deforestation, mining, and industrial agriculture, countries such as Germany bear a particular responsibility – through their consumption of resources, their trade relations, and their political decisions.
How can new partnerships and forms of solidarity-based action emerge? Whose voices from the Amazon do we need to hear in order to rethink our own actions in Europe?
With:
Languages: Portuguese and German
Admission: The event is free of charge.
From 6 p.m.: Brazilian finger food will be available for purchase in the foyer.
22/23.11, 2025
4:00 p.m.
Bibiana Jiménez / XXTanzTheater: “La Pola – Ontologies of Women, Movement, and Decoloniality”
In Latin America in particular, colonial and patriarchal structures continue to shape the representation of women in dance to this day, limiting their self-determination and visibility. Inspired by the Colombian resistance fighter and national heroine Policarpa Salavarrieta (La Pola), XXTanzTheater uses transcultural dialogue to address the topic of colonialism and its lasting impacts.
Policarpa Salavarrieta was born near Bogotá around 1795, arrested in the fall of 1817, and sentenced to death. She is still considered a symbol of the resistance against the Spanish reconquest of New Granada in Colombia.
In this project, her story serves as a starting point for highlighting the strength and courage of powerful women in different cultures.
A collaboration between:
XXTanzTheater from Cologne, the dance program of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Atlántico University in Barranquilla (Colombia), the Master’s program in Dance Education at the Center for Contemporary Dance at the Cologne University of Music and Dance (ZZT), and the RJM.
Admission: Museum admission
Registration: Please email reservierungenlapola@gmail.com
Meeting point: Foyer of the RJM
More information: XX TanzTheater
21.11. 25
11:00 a.m.– 5:00 p.m.
Grand Opening of SPACE4KIDS – Kids4Klima opens at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum!
On November 29, the SPACE4KIDS – Kids4Klima opens at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum! This is a place for children to build, craft, play, read, and be creative. From that day on, it will be open every Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The room, located on the 1st floor next to the Yellow Room, is free of charge for children and their accompanying adults, with a host from In-Haus e.V., an Intercultural Center of the City of Cologne, always on site.
At the heart of the space is a large tree made from upcycled materials, where children can attach their wishes and dreams for the future. For the first time, members of the newly established Children and Youth Advisory Board will also help shape the SPACE4KIDS.
SPACE4KIDS – Kids4Klima is offered by the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in cooperation with In-Haus e.V., the Museums Service Cologne, and the Children and Youth Advisory Board.
Supervision of children is the responsibility of their accompanying adults.
