The Sprengel Museum in Hannover is preparing to unveil one of its most ambitious exhibitions in years, featuring works by three iconic contemporary artists: Niki de Saint Phalle, Yayoi Kusama, and Takashi Murakami. The exhibition "Niki. Kusama. Murakami. Love You for Infinity" will open on September 6 and run for nearly six months, spanning 2,000 square meters of exhibition space across twelve rooms with 110 works from 18 lenders.

Sometimes art needs to get a little louder in the city, and it must. While art and noise don't typically go together well, and art appreciation still has much to do with distinction and the feeling of being something special through connoisseurship, sometimes there must be major art events that draw the masses. These blockbuster art exhibitions boost visitor numbers and ensure that museums become the talk of the town.

Major art events allow institutions to make noise, wake up audiences, and demonstrate that they are still relevant and valuable. Cultural politicians appreciate this approach, as blockbuster exhibitions show that the masses not only support art but can also benefit from it. Museum Director Reinhard Spieler hopes to attract 200,000 visitors to this superlative exhibition.

The museum has announced the exhibition with phrases like "art of superlatives" and "highlight of international format – made possible through cultural partnership with enercity." They describe it as an ambitious exhibition project, an exclamation point, and an artistic dialogue between three icons of contemporary art. The exhibition project commemorates the 25th anniversary of Niki de Saint Phalle's donation of more than 400 works to the Sprengel Museum.

According to a museum announcement, "With Love You For Infinity, the Sprengel Museum Hannover affirms its claim to combine cultural relevance with aesthetic vision and international appeal." International appeal and cultural relevance are worthy goals, but how does one achieve them? Often, the combination of well-known artist names or collaboration between different institutions helps.

The Sprengel Museum has succeeded with both strategies in the past. The success of the "Marc Macke Delaunay" exhibition in 2009 was spectacular, attracting 270,000 visitors to the Sprengel Museum. Not quite as successful but still very encouraging were the visitor numbers for collaborations with other Hannover art institutions. The exhibitions "Made in Germany" (2007) and "Made in Germany Two" (2012), where the Sprengel Museum collaborated with the Kestner Society and the Hannover Art Association, also achieved visitor records (41,500 in 2007, 35,000 in 2012) and garnered national attention for these exhibitions featuring exciting contemporary German art.

One exhibition in Hannover received particularly widespread national attention twenty years ago. Santiago Sierra, invited by then-director Veit Görner, transformed the Kestner Society into "House in Mud," having 120 cubic meters of mud and peat hauled into the building. Heated discussions about the tasks and limits of art ensued, with reader letters calling it a "mess" while arts pages indulged in wordplay.

Visitors to the mud rooms painted hearts on the walls with the sludge. Eventually, someone mixed cress seeds into the mud, leading to unexpected growth. This was actually unnecessary – art in Hannover was already flourishing beautifully at that time. These grand exhibitions demonstrate how cultural institutions must occasionally create spectacle to maintain relevance and public engagement in an increasingly competitive cultural landscape.