In the early 1980s, Nan Goldin (*1953) began showing her photographs as slide shows in clubs, underground cinemas and public places. Year after year, she updated her shows, discovering new subjects, which she depicted with a sometimes uncomfortable detachment. Friends, members of subcultures and Goldin herself allow intimate insights into their lives, which are characterized by parties, drug withdrawal and traumatic experiences, among other things. In recent years, Goldin has made a name for herself primarily through her campaign group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), with which she opposes the billionaire Sackler family and the opioid crisis in the USA. The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is presenting a major retrospective of her oeuvre with the exhibition Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well. The show runs from November 23, 2024 to April 6, 2025.
The exhibition brings together various series of Goldin's works as slide shows. Each slide show is presented in its own pavilion, the design of which relates to the show. Visitors can expect to see Goldin's best-known series The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1981-2022) with private snapshots that had a major influence on the Heroin Chic style of the 1990s, The Other Side (1992-2021), a tribute to Goldin's trans friends, Sisters, Saints and Sibyls (2004-2022) about family trauma and suicide, and Memory Lost (2019-2021) about drug withdrawal experiences. In 2007, Goldin won the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, endowed with 2 million Swedish kronor (around 200,000 euros), which is considered the world's most prestigious award for photographers.
This Will Not End Well was first shown at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2022 and then at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2023. After Berlin, the show will open on October 9, 2025 at the Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in Milan and in March 2026 at the Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais in Paris.
