The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen are pleased to present Beyond the Manosphere. Masculinities Today. The international group exhibition was on view at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam from spring to summer 2026 (17 April to 2 August 2026) and will now be shown at the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen from autumn 2026 to winter 2027 (3 October 2026 to 24 January 2027).

What does masculinity mean today? With the rise of the manosphere, this question has taken on new urgency. What is meant is a loose network of online spaces in which a dominant, misogynistic masculinity is claimed. Fueled by the spread of Trumpism, this form of masculinity has increasingly permeated the mainstream.

This patriarchal heterosexual masculinity is not new. She is old. Patriarchy is perhaps one of the oldest systems of all. There was a moment when it seemed as if this kind of masculinity was retreating as a claim to power, having been at least rudimentarily held accountable after the long struggles of various feminist movements in the last century with #MeToo. Now that this movement has lost momentum, masculinity in its status quo affirmative and dominant form can be understood as something that has simply remained: a fundamental foundation that maintains a gender hierarchy in which men are at the top and women (as well as everyone else) are at the bottom. This kind of masculinity, which is now on the rise again, is currently being redefined as progress and mobilized for capitalist and fascist purposes.

The title of the exhibition was not chosen to confirm the manosphere, but to break it up. The exhibition starts with the concept of the manosphere and reads it against the grain: If we understand masculinity as a "sphere", what can be seen in it? What cultural ideas and realities shape masculinities today and what space do they occupy? Beyond the Manosphere. Masculinities Today expands and questions existing ideas of masculinity. By bringing together works of art that speak of power, dominance and violence as well as of their infiltration and reversal, the exhibition opens up a critical perspective. In this exhibition, types, clichés and cultural tropes appear again and again. They are the sedimentary layers of the terrain, our traditional ideas of masculinity – persistent, sticky and tough. But stories of love and desire are also present, showing how our views of masculinity shape how we interact with each other – and the way we value others and are judged ourselves.

With selected works from the collections of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen as well as loans and new commissioned works, the exhibition examines masculinity as a carrier and staging of power, but also as a lived reality that can be contradictory, banal, unstable and tender at the same time.

A catalogue will be published by Bierke Books to accompany the exhibition, designed by Sabo Day. It includes a curatorial essay by Melanie Bühler, artistic contributions by Amanda van Hesteren, Tetsumi Kudo, Reba Maybury, Sands Murray-Wassink, and Bruno Zhu, essays by Hannah Black, Maurits de Bruijn, and Asa Seresin, and an interview with Judith Butler.