London/Munich. From October 15 to 19, Frieze London and Frieze Masters will return to London’s Regent’s Park. As one of Frieze’s long-standing global partners since 2004, BMW honours the artistic work of David Hockney as part of the BMW Art Car World Tour and provides VIP shuttle service. Frieze London takes its place on the global stage as part of the ever-expanding BMW Art Car World Tour, a journey that will span continents and continue well into 2026. Marking the 50th anniversary of this iconic series, the tour brings together a constellation of exhibitions across five continents, enriched by a vibrant array of events.

The iconic Art Car #14, designed by David Hockney 30 years ago, will be on display in The Lobby of The Peninsula London from October 14 to November 3. During the “Peninsula Classic Car Afternoon Tea” which runs through November 18 there will be a special opportunity to engage with Hockney’s Art Car: BMW representatives will dive deep into the origins and lead through the journey of Hockney’s Art Car design on October 14 and 15. Sculptural culinary delights will be served to bring together the British tea tradition and the BMW Art Cars’ golden jubilee. The final days of the exhibition coincide with RM Sotheby’s Classic Car auction presented in partnership with the Royal Automobile Club which brings a selection of significant automobiles– from historic treasures to modern collectibles – to The Peninsula.

David Hockney’s BMW 850CSi puts a new spin on the traditional idea of a car’s paintwork by effectively turning the car inside out. “I thought it would be a good idea to show the car as if one could see inside,” he said. Like an X-ray, Hockney’s design reveals the anatomy of the car and its occupants: the door sports an outline of the driver, and Hockney’s loyal dachshund, Stanley, can be seen sitting on the back seat, referencing the artist’s love of his dogs. Stylised engine components are depicted on the bonnet, while expanses of green sweep across the body – a visual metaphor for the passing scenery, movement, and time. Hockney’s visual language melds the car’s interior and the outside world to create a new and unusual perspective on motoring.

Born in Bradford, England, in 1937, David Hockney has been one of the most flamboyant and influential protagonists on the international art scene since the early 1960s. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1962 and soon joined the exclusive circles of Swinging Sixties London. He established his style as his very own form of international Pop Art and achieved great popularity with it. His works – among them iconic images depicting swimming pools and Californian landscapes – illustrate his lifelong fascination with light, colour, and the relationship between perspective and movement. David Hockney’s Art Car was intended solely as an exhibition piece and has never been driven on the road or in a race.

The BMW Art Car World Tour charts an ambitious course, with stops at prestigious destinations such as Art Basel Hong Kong, the Le Mans Classic in France, Belgium’s Zoute Grand Prix, the Shanghai Motor Show in China, and Italy’s Concorso d’Eleganza, among others. Showcasing the collection of 20 iconic BMW Art Cars, the tour serves as a testament to the company’s deep-rooted commitment to global cultural engagement – spanning more than a hundred initiatives across contemporary art, music, film, and design. Follow the journey here.

BMW Art Car #14 by David Hockney
October 14-November 3
The Peninsula London,
1 Grosvenor Pl,
London SW1X 7HJ,
United Kingdom

The Peninsula London Classic Car Afternoon Tea is offered daily until November 18 from 1.00 – 6.30pm reservations can be made here.

Dedicated media slots on October 14 and 15 from 1.00 – 3.00pm can be requested here. Capacity is limited, first come first served.

Frieze London Dates
Wednesday, October 15: 11am - 7pm (invitation only)
Thursday, October 16: 11am – 1pm (Members and Invitation only preview) 1pm – 5pm General admission tickets
Friday, October 17: 11am - 7pm 
Saturday, October 18: 11am - 7pm
Sunday, October 19: 11am – 6pm

Media Accreditation

The BMW Group's Cultural Engagement, with exclusive updates and deeper insights into its global initiatives can be followed on Instagram at @BMWGroupCulture.

Note: This press release is a 1:1 copy of the original issued by BMW headquarters in Germany. No adaptions have been made to cater to the UK market.

Munich. Calder, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Holzer, Hockney, Koons, Rauschenberg, Mahlangu, Eliasson, Baldessari, Cao Fei, Mehretu. For the past 50 years, the BMW Art Car series has provided artists fascinated by automobiles with a perfect playground for art and design, technology and innovation, motorsport and engineering. The collection of 20 BMW Art Cars embodies the essence of global cultural engagement with over one hundred initiatives across contemporary art, music and film, as well as design. The "rolling sculptures" – from Alexander Calder’s first-ever Art Car to Julie Mehretu’s latest – offer a cross-section of art history over the past five decades: minimalism, pop art, magical realism, abstraction, conceptual art and digital art are all represented.

“I love that car. It has turned out better than the artwork.”
Andy Warhol, BMW Art Car #4, 1979

The artists are selected by international juries of museum directors. In close collaboration with the BMW Group’s engineering and design teams, they freely develop their concepts and inspire everyone involved. To mark the 50th anniversary, the BMW Art Car World Tour features an exhibition programme spanning all five continents and including numerous accompanying events.

“The car should not only race in a physical way but also in the heart.”
Cao Fei, BMW Art Car #18, 2016

An anniversary around the world.

"The BMW Art Car Collection celebrates 50 years of artistic freedom and visionary design. The 20 vehicles have become international icons, telling stories of society, technology and performance. Our commitment to art and culture is long-term. We are continuously developing the collection and bringing art and automotive culture together in a unique way," says Ilka Horstmeier, Board Member for Human Resources and Real Estate at BMW Group.

The BMW Art Car World Tour kicks off in Europe and Asia. On 20-21 March, the BMW Art Cars created by Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney and Jeff Koons will be on display at the Museum of Applied Arts and the SPARK Art Fair in Vienna for the BMW Group Niederlassung Wien event “(R)Evolution of Art”. The latest and 20th BMW Art Car – the BMW M Hybrid V8 by renowned American painter Julie Mehretu – will embark on an Asian tour and be displayed at Art Basel in Hong Kong on 28-30 March.

Mehretu is developing her Art Car project far beyond the vehicle as an object and will host workshops for young film and media artists across five African countries in 2025, together with film producer Mehret Mandefro and the BMW Group. The results of the African Film and Media Arts Collective (AFMAC) will be presented in 2026 alongside Mehretu's Art Car in an exhibition at the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, curated by its Executive Director, Koyo Kouoh, the designated curator of the Venice Biennale 2026.

“The whole BMW Art Car project is about invention, about imagination, about pushing limits of what can be possible.”
Julie Mehretu, BMW Art Car #20, 2024

Important museums and platforms for classic automobiles are also celebrating the milestone anniversary of the BMW Art Cars. The 13th Art Car by Sandro Chia will be showcased at the classic car festival Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este at Lake Como in May. In July and August, the Louwman Museum in The Hague will present eight BMW Art Cars in a special exhibition.

“I also thought it would be nice if women could participate other than standing around in bikinis.”
Jenny Holzer, BMW Art Car #15, 1999

The BMW Museum, the home of the BMW Art Cars when they are not travelling the world, is also honouring the collection by combining two anniversaries in a special exhibition. The BMW 3 Series is also celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025, and starting 16 June, the museum will showcase a historical overview of all BMW 3 Series models as well as the BMW M3 Art Cars by Sandro Chia, Michael Jagamara Nelson, and Ken Done.                     

“I think mobile museums would be a good idea. This car is the fulfilment of my dream. I would like to do ten more.”
Robert Rauschenberg, BMW Art Car #6, 1986

New Art Car book, new Art Car model, new Art Car fashion collection.

In addition to the exhibition programme, BMW is releasing various new art and lifestyle products in celebration of the anniversary. The 1:18-scale miniature of the 20th Art Car by Julie Mehretu is available for purchase across BMW Lifestyle Shops, with a 1:43 version to follow later in the year. Together with publisher Hatje Cantz, BMW is presenting the third edition of the "BMW Art Cars" catalogue. Interviews with the founders of the collection and essays on each of the 20 Art Cars highlight the art historical relevance and diversity of the works. The cover design of the new edition is by Julie Mehretu. Following the popular Alexander Calder and Roy Lichtenstein fashion collections, the third collaboration with Puma based on the BMW Art Cars will be announced later this year.

“So you can say, the BMW Art Car is definitely a typical Baldessari and the fastest artwork I ever created!”
John Baldessari, BMW Art Car #19, 2016

Born from passion: a brief history of the BMW Art Car Collection.

On 14 June 1975, the BMW 3.0 CSL designed by American sculptor Alexander Calder took to the track at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The project was initially intended as a one-time collaboration between the artist and BMW. The audience cheered for the colourful racing car and children rejoiced. BMW decided this had to continue! It all began with the passion for art and motorsport of French auctioneer and racing driver Hervé Poulain. In 1975, Poulain found a visionary ally in Jochen Neerpasch, founder and Head of BMW Motorsport, for his plan to enter a BMW designed by an artist in the legendary Le Mans endurance race. Even though the first BMW Art Car retired from the race after seven hours, it became a true crowd favourite, laying the foundations for the collection.

“Hervé, win! But drive carefully!”
Alexander Calder, BMW Art Car #1, 1975

In close collaboration with legendary New York gallerist Leo Castelli, BMW Art Cars by American artists such as Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol followed – and all were raced by Hervé Poulain and the BMW team at Le Mans. From 1982 to 1992, the BMW Art Car Collection opened up to the world, with artists transforming various standard production models: Ernst Fuchs, Robert Rauschenberg, Michael Jagamara Nelson, Ken Done, Matazo Kayama, César Manrique, A. R. Penck, Esther Mahlangu, Sandro Chia and David Hockney. In 1999, BMW returned to motorsport with the BMW V12 LMR prototype and American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer. Eight years later, Olafur Eliasson designed "Your mobile expectations: BMW H₂R Project" based on a record-breaking hydrogen race car. Jeff Koons, John Baldessari, Cao Fei, and Julie Mehretu have added dynamic race cars over the past 15 years. Since its invention nearly 140 years ago, artists worldwide have engaged with the automobile both critically and enthusiastically. And over the last 50 years, the BMW Art Car series has contributed significantly to this inspiring dialogue.

“These race cars are like life, they are bursting with power and have enormous energy. My ideas are meant to merge with this power – it's all about fully embracing it.”
Jeff Koons, BMW Art Car #17, 2010

BMW Art Car World Tour 2025 (selection)

until 16 April 2025: Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa
BMW Art Car #12 Esther Mahlangu

20-21 March 2025: SPARK Art Fair and MAK Museum Vienna, Austria
Event “(R)Evolution of Art” of the BMW Niederlassung Wien
BMW Art Cars #3 Roy Lichtenstein, #4 Andy Warhol, #6 Robert Rauschenberg, #14 David Hockney, #16 Jeff Koons

28-30 March 2025: Art Basel in Hong Kong
BMW Art Car #20 Julie Mehretu

23 April-2 May 2025: Shanghai Auto Show, China
BMW Art Car #20 Julie Mehretu

18-20 April 2025: Art Dubai, United Arab Emirates
BMW Art Car # TBA

May 2025: 50 Years of BMW Switzerland, Zurich, Switzerland
BMW Art Cars #5 Ernst Fuchs, #8 Ken Done, #11 A. R. Penck, #14 David Hockney, #15 Jenny Holzer, #19 John Baldessari

9-11 May 2025: Taipei Dangdai, Taiwan
BMW Art Car # TBA

27 May–1 June 2025: Bratislava, Slovakia
BMW Art Cars #2 Frank Stella, #7 Michael Jagamara Nelson, #9 Matazo Kayama

15-18 May 2025: Market Art Fair, Stockholm, Sweden
BMW Art Cars #1 Alexander Calder, #3 Roy Lichtenstein, #4 Andy Warhol, #17 Jeff Koons

23-25 May 2025: Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, Lake Como, Italy
BMW Art Car #13 Sandro Chia

16 June 2025-1 January 2026: BMW Museum, Munich
BMW Art Cars #7 Michael Jagamara Nelson, #8 Ken Done, #13 Sandro Chia

16 June 2025-31 August 2025: BMW Welt, Munich
BMW Art Cars #15 Jenny Holzer, #20 Julie Mehretu

27-29 June 2025: The Aurora, Båstad, Sweden
BMW Art Cars #1 Alexander Calder, #3 Roy Lichtenstein, #4 Andy Warhol, #17 Jeff Koons

3 July-31August, 2025: Louwman Museum, The Hague, Netherlands
BMW Art Cars #1 Alexander Calder, #2 Frank Stella, #3 Roy Lichtenstein, #4 Andy Warhol, #10 César Manrique, #12 Esther Mahlangu, #14 David Hockney, #17 Jeff Koons

24-28 September 2025: Contemporary Istanbul, Turkey
BMW Art Cars #1 Alexander Calder, #20 Julie Mehretu

The Art Car World Tour schedule is still evolving and will continue through most of 2026. Further stops and venues are planned, including Australia, Belgium (Brussels, Zoute), China (Macau), Germany (Berlin, Munich, Düsseldorf), Kazakhstan, Latin America, Morocco (Marrakech), South Africa, Spain, Switzerland (Basel) and USA.

BMW Art Cars

1. Alexander Calder / BMW 3.0 CSL / 1975
2. Frank Stella / BMW 3.0 CSL / 1976
3. Roy Lichtenstein / BMW 320 Group 5 / 1977
4. Andy Warhol / BMW M1 Group 4 / 1979
5. Ernst Fuchs / BMW 635 CSi / 1982
6. Robert Rauschenberg / BMW 635 CSi / 1986
7. Michael Jagamara Nelson / BMW M3 Group A / 1989
8. Ken Done / BMW M3 Group A / 1989
9. Matazo Kayama / BMW 535i / 1990
10. César Manrique / BMW 730i / 1990
11. A.R. Penck / BMW Z1 / 1991
12. Esther Mahlangu / BMW 525i / 1991
13. Sandro Chia / BMW M3 GTR / 1992
14. David Hockney / BMW 850 CSi / 1995
15. Jenny Holzer / BMW V12 LMR / 1999
16. Olafur Eliasson / BMW H₂R / 2007
17. Jeff Koons / BMW M3 GT2 / 2010
18. Cao Fei / BMW M6 GT3 / 2016
19. John Baldessari / BMW M6 GTLM / 2016
20. Julie Mehretu / BMW M Hybrid V8 / 2024

Further information on the BMW Art Car Collection can be found here.

Note: This press release is a 1:1 copy of the original issued by BMW headquarters in Germany. No adaptations have been made to cater for the UK market. 

Paris/Munich. The 20th BMW Art Car is being presented to the public for the first time today at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Designed by renowned New York-based contemporary artist Julie Mehretu, the project transforms the BMW M Hybrid V8 race car into a performative work of art, continuing a longstanding tradition of BMW Art Cars and competitive racing. Just a few weeks after its World Premiere in the French capital, the newest edition in the storied BMW Art Car collection will compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

“The whole BMW Art Car project is about invention, about imagination, about pushing limits of what can be possible. I don’t think of this car as something you would exhibit. I am thinking of it as something that will race in Le Mans. It’s a performative painting. My BMW Art Car was created in close collaboration with motorsport and engineering teams,” says Julie Mehretu. “The BMW Art Car is only completed once the race is over.”

The collaboration between BMW and Julie Mehretu also includes a joint commitment to a series of PanAfrican Translocal Media Workshops for filmmakers, which will tour various African cities in 2025 and 2026, and will culminate in a major exhibition at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town.

“The BMW Art Cars are an essential part of our global cultural commitment. For almost 50 years, we have been cooperating with artists who are just as fascinated by mobility and design as they are by technology and motorsports. Julie Mehretu's vision for a racing car is an extraordinarily strong contribution to our BMW Art Cars series,” said Oliver Zipse, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG. “Julie Mehretu has created more than an amazing Art Car. Her ideas provided the impetus for us to expand the cultural commitment of our Art Cars to promote the creativity of young artists in Africa.”

A Performative Painting is Created.
Space, movement and energy have always been central motifs in Julie Mehretu's work. For the design of the 20th BMW Art Car, she transformed a two-dimensional image into a three-dimensional representation for the first time, with which she succeeded in bringing dynamism into form. Julie Mehretu used the colour and form vocabulary of her monumental painting “Everywhen” (2021 - 2023) as a starting point for her design. The work is currently on view at the artist’s major retrospective at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice and will subsequently become part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, to which it has been gifted.

Its abstract visual form results from digitally altered photographs, which are superimposed in several layers of dot grids, neon-coloured veils and the black markings characteristic of Mehretu's work. “In the studio where I had the model of the BMW M Hybrid V8 I was just sitting in front of the painting and I thought: What would happen if this car seemed to go through that painting and becomes affected by it,” Julie Mehretu says. “The idea was to make a remix, a mash-up of the painting. I kept seeing that painting kind of dripping into the car. Even the kidneys of the car inhaled the painting.”

BMW Art Cars with Le Mans history come together at the Concorso d’Eleganza.
The fusion of image and vehicle was realised with the help of 3D mapping, with which the motif was transferred to the contours of the vehicle. The elaborate foiling allows for the fully designed BMW M Hybrid V8 to compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. BMW Motorsport drivers Sheldon van der Linde (RSA), Robin Frijns (NED) and René Rast (GER) will enter the 20th BMW Art Car with starting number 20 at the Circuit de la Sarthe on 15 June. Like them, Julie Mehretu is also eagerly awaiting the race: “I went to see the BMW M Hybrid V8 race in Daytona, and this experience was overwhelming. Designers, engineers, aerodynamicists and so many other creative minds are working on taking this vehicle to its extreme. When it goes out on the racetrack now, so many dreams will be fulfilled.”

Leading up to race day, Julie Mehretu's BMW Art Car will make an appearance at the Concorso d'Eleganza at Villa d'Este in Lake Como on its way to Le Mans. As part of the exhibition for historic vehicles organised by the BMW Group and the Grand Hotel Villa d'Este, Julie Mehretu herself will present the 20th edition of the BMW Art Car Collection. It will be featured on the grounds of the Villa Erba together with the BMW Art Cars by Alexander Calder (1975), Frank Stella (1976), Roy Lichtenstein (1977), Andy Warhol (1979), Jenny Holzer (1999) and Jeff Koons (2010), which also made their race debut at Le Mans. Julie Mehretu will discuss the creation of the 20th BMW Art Car in an artist talk with Adrian van Hooydonk, Head of BMW Group Design, on Sunday, 26 May 2024.

Inspiration for Young Artists: PanAfrican Translocal Media Workshops.
The collaboration between BMW and Julie Mehretu was conceived from the beginning beyond the automobile. It will culminate after the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a project for emerging artists on the African continent: The PanAfrican Translocal Media Workshops. Together, the partners are focussing on the creative potential across the African continent, where the BMW Group has been making a contribution to social responsibility with educational projects for over 50 years.

Julie Mehretu and Mehret Mandefro, Emmy-nominated producer, writer and co-founder of the Realness Institute, which works to strengthen the media ecosystem in Africa, will organise workshops in various African cities and regions throughout 2025. The goal of the project is to provide a space for artists and filmmakers to collaborate and exchange ideas. These meetings will offer a forum for artists to develop new pathways towards a just civic future in their respective communities.

The PanAfrican Translocal Workshop series will visit the cities of Dakar (Senegal), Marrakech (Morocco), Kigali (Rwanda), Lagos (Nigeria) and Cape Town (South Africa). The results of the workshops will be presented together with the 20th BMW Art Car at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town in the first half of 2026.

The BMW Group is thus consistently continuing its decades-long support for film and creative talent: from the short film series ‘The Hire’ and the partnership with the Cannes International Film Festival to the acquisition of works by students from art academies in the neighbourhoods of the company’s plants worldwide.

The Artist.
Julie Mehretu is a world-renowned American painter. She was born in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, in 1970. Together with her family she moved to the U.S. at the age of seven. She lives and works in New York City and Berlin.

Mehretu’s practice in painting, drawing and printmaking engage the viewer in a dynamic visual articulation of contemporary experience, a depiction of social behavior and the psychogeography of space by exploring palimpsests of history, from geological time to a modern-day phenomenology of the social.

Mehretu received her Bachelor’s Degree from the Kalamazoo College in Michigan, spent a year abroad at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, and completed her Master's degree of Fine Art with honors from The Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. Mehretu has received numerous awards, including the The MacArthur Award (2005), The Berlin Prize: Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship at The American Academy in Berlin (2007) and the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts Award (2015). A mid-career survey of Mehretu's work recently toured at LACMA (Los Angeles), High Museum (Atlanta) The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and The Walker Museum of Art (Minneapolis) from 2019 to 2023. Her largest European solo exhibition to date entitled “Ensemble” opened March 17, 2024 at Palazzo Grassi in Venice.

Mehretu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and The National Academy of Design. Her global representative is Marian Goodman Gallery. She also exhibits with White Cube, London, and Carlier Gebauer, Berlin.

Statement from the Jury for the 20th BMW Art Car.
Julie Mehretu was unanimously selected in 2018 by a jury of high-ranking representatives of the international art world to design the 20th BMW Art Car. The panel includes renowned curators and museum directors from various countries, including Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director and Chief Curator, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town; Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, London; and Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director and Chief Curator, High Line Art, New York.

On the occasion of the World Premiere of the BMW Art Car designed by Julie Mehretu in Paris, the jury members published the following statement: "We are thrilled with Julie's BMW Art Car! Okwui Enwezor had already coined the phrase ‘Dynamism in Form’ during our jury session and nothing applies better to her BMW M Hybrid V8 race car. Julie’s first three-dimensional work combines her aesthetics and formal language with the idea of the glitch and the blur, turning speed into a visceral experience. This energetic space is as fierce and competitive in racing as it is ambitious as a creative playground of the imagination. It not only pays homage to the art cars of Jenny Holzer and Frank Stella, but also spins a visual web from Mad Max to graffiti and street art that is unique within the series of BMW Art Cars."

The BMW M Hybrid V8.
The canvas for the 20th BMW Art Car is the BMW M Hybrid V8. The new race car from BMW M GmbH features a hybrid electric drivetrain system with approximately 640 hp, powered by a 4.0-litre V8 engine supported by an electric motor (top speed: up to 345 km/h or 215 mph, depending on the race track layout).

During this year’s official FIA World Endurance Championship races, the BMW M Hybrid V8 will take on high-calibre competition in the Hypercars category. The car will also compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans – the first BMW M Motorsport prototype to do so since the BMW V12 LMR, which won the classic race in 1999.

The BMW Art Car Collection.
Renowned artists from all over the world have participated in the BMW Art Car program since 1975. The initiative came from the French racing driver and art lover Hervé Poulain, who, together with the then BMW Head of Motorsport Jochen Neerpasch, asked his artist friend Alexander Calder to paint a car. The result was a BMW 3.0 CSL, which competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1975 and became a crowd favourite.

This was the birth of the BMW Art Car Collection. In the years that followed, renowned artists such as Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Esther Mahlangu, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Ólafur Elíasson and Jeff Koons enriched the collection with further BMW Art Cars, each in their own individual style. Most recently, the Chinese multimedia artist Cao Fei and American conceptual artist John Baldessari each presented a BMW Art Car based on the BMW M6 GT3 and GTLM respectively in 2016 and 2017. The BMW Art Cars are not only shown at their home, the BMW Museum in Munich, but are also on tour around the world as part of international exhibitions.

Note: This press release is a 1:1 copy of the original issued by BMW headquarters in Germany. No adaptations have been made to cater for the UK market.

Munich/New York. BMW announced a collaboration today at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City with internationally renowned New York-based artist Julie Mehretu to create the 20th BMW Art Car. Mehretu was unanimously chosen by an international jury of museum directors and curators, and will be given total creative freedom to design the next instalment in BMW’s legendary collection of ”rolling sculptures”. BMW will enter Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8 Art Car in the 24 Hour race of Le Mans in June 2024. This continues an almost 50-year tradition that has delighted not only motorsport enthusiasts but anyone into design or the arts, technology and mobility. Since 1975, artists such as Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Cao Fei, and John Baldessari have created racing cars for BMW.

“I've loved cars for most of my life, as toys, as objects, as possibilities. It is from that space that I'm really excited to be working on the next BMW Art Car more than anything,” stated Julie Mehretu. “The thrill of the speed, the 24 Hour race of Le Mans and what is possible to invent in hybrid and fully electric vehicles as future modes of play and pushing ahead into new terrains of transportation and motorsports.”

”The BMW Art Car Collection is a central element of our global cultural commitment, which has been in place for more than 50 years," said Ilka Horstmeier, Member of the Board of Management of BMW AG, Human Resources and Real Estate, at the presentation in New York. ”The combination of technology and art, of design and motorsport sparks a timeless fascination. I have admired Julie Mehretu's work for many years. I am particularly pleased that our cooperation will have a lasting cultural impact beyond the vehicle she has designed, especially in Africa.”

An artistic concept beyond the car: Translocal Media Workshop Series in 2025
The collaboration between BMW and Julie Mehretu will not only leave its mark on the Le Mans racetrack.

There are far and few spaces on the continent of Africa where artists can convene, exchange, and experiment in ways that foster collaboration across local contexts. Julie Mehretu and Mehret Mandefro, Emmy-nominated producer, writer and co-founder of the Realness Institute which aims to strengthen the media ecosystem across Africa, will host a series of gatherings in eight African cities over the course of nine months to open up space for artists to meet, exchange, and collaborate in translocal ways. These workshops have the sole intention of opening up a forum for the artists to consider new pathways to implementing just civic futures in their respective local communities and harness the power of the translocal collective.

The methodology of these workshops is based on the Exodus Media Workshop (EMW) which is an arts education laboratory initiated by Denniston Hill that focuses on the inter-dependent inventions of image making and representation in the media. The workshop begins from the shared intention that we must disentangle self-being from its mediated depiction, and that our identities can be reclaimed and reshaped by our own standards.

The outcome and results of the workshops will be presented together with the 20th BMW Art Car at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town in 2025.

The artist.
Julie Mehretu was born in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, in 1970. Together with her family she moved to the USA at the age of seven. She received her B.A. from Kalamazoo College, Michigan, graduated from The Rhode Island School of Design with a Masters of Fine Arts degree in 1997, and also spent a year studying at Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar Senegal. In exploring palimpsests of history, from geological time to a modern-day phenomenology of the social, her paintings, prints and drawings engage the viewer in a dynamic visual articulation of contemporary experience, a depiction of social behavior and the psychogeography of space. 

Mehretu has been running a studio in New York since 1999. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the MacArthur Award and the US Department of State Medal of Arts Award. A representative survey of her work has been exhibited at LACMA (Los Angeles), the High Museum (Atlanta), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), and the Walker Museum of Art (Minneapolis) from 2019 to 2023. In 2021, Julie Mehretu became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Design.

Julie Mehretu is represented globally by Marian Goodman Gallery, and also exhibits with White Cube, London, and Carlier Gebauer, Berlin.

Statements of the jury. Unanimous nomination.
Julie Mehretu was unanimously chosen to design the 20^th BMW Art Car in 2018 by an international jury from the art world with an outstanding reputation based on their experience and expertise in leading positions at major museums and galleries. It is composed of the following personalities:

• Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director and Chief Curator, High Line Art, New York
• Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York
• Anton Belov, Director, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow
• Anita Dube, artist and curator Kochi-Muziris-Biennale 2018
• Yilmaz Dziewior, Director, Museum Ludwig, Cologne
• Okwui Enwezor (1963 – 2019), former Director, Haus der Kunst, Munich 
• Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director, New Museum, New York
• Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
• Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director and Chief Curator, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town
• Matthias Mühling, Director, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich
• Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London
• Hervé Poulain, Initiator BMW Art Car Collection and CEO Artcurial
• Stephanie Rosenthal, Director, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago:
“Julie Mehretu is the perfect artist for this early 21st century. To merge her work with the shape and form of a speeding vehicle is really an alignment of perfection. For years, Julie has painted speed and for a long time worked very successfully at scale. This means to me that she will be able to create a form that you can see from a distance because with many of her large commissions, you need to back up to really enjoy them. She has an understanding of space and speed that is a perfect partner to the BMW Art Car.”

Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director and Chief Curator, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town:
“I think that Julie Mehretu’s practice combines a sprawling visuality with a political background. She will be the perfect artist to really moderate this tension about race, technology, car, velocity and bring it into a form that is legible for the wider public.”

Okwui Enwezor (1963 - 2019), former Director, Haus der Kunst, Munich:
“Julie Mehretu’s work incapsulates different questions of movement. She expresses dynamism within a form. It is a very clear and sound understanding of how the object acts in space. And I think this really makes it a very exciting proposition to have an artist of her calibre who has the long-standing experience to take on this project.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London:
“Julie Mehretu creates paintings which very often go beyond the canvas. Her practice is very interdisciplinary and of course, that’s exactly what will happen with the BMW Art Car. The artists do not just develop ideas alone in their studio, but in dialogue with many people in the company and particularly with the engineers, the inventors and the designers.”

Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director and Chief Curator, High Line Art, New York:
“I think Julie is a wonderful artist who has been able to bring the three-dimensionality of our reality into the two-dimensionality of paintings and flat surfaces. She is someone that has been looking at our cities, the speed of our culture, vectors and velocity and these are all themes that resonate with the BMW Art Car. Her project for the BMW Art Car will be compelling and bring together all these aspects into this wonderful platform.”

Stephanie Rosenthal, Director, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi:
“Julie Mehretu is mainly known for large-scale two-dimensional works which are based on speed, space, creating and imagining space. And so now working with the BMW Art Car really will extend, I think, her experience of working with a three-dimensional object and kind of implementing her idea of space, and also probably become a form of futurist architecture exploring technology. And, therefore, I think she’s a brilliant pick.”

The BMW M Hybrid V8.
The canvas for the 20th BMW Art Car is the BMW M Hybrid V8. BMW M GmbH's new competition car in endurance racing features a hybrid drive system with around 640 hp, whose 4.0-liter V8 engine is supported by an electric motor (max speed: up to 345 kph/215 mph, depending on track layout). This makes the prototype race car, which weighs just 1,030 kilograms, the poster child for typical M performance and the fascination with electrified drives.

The BMW M Hybrid V8 is currently competing successfully in the GTP (Grand Touring Prototype) class of the North American IMSA endurance racing series. BMW M Motorsport will also return to the FIA World Endurance Championship in the 2024 season. In the races for the official FIA World Endurance Championship, the BMW M Hybrid V8 will face top-class competition in the Hypercars category. This means that the BMW M Hybrid V8 will also be competing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans – the first BMW M Motorsport prototype since the BMW V12 LMR won the classic in 1999.

The BMW Art Car Collection.
Since 1975, renowned artists from all over the world have been designing BMW Art Cars. The initiative came from French racing driver and art lover Hervé Poulain, who, in collaboration with then Head of BMW Motorsport Jochen Neerpasch, asked his artist friend Alexander Calder to paint an automobile. The result was a BMW 3.0 CSL that competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1975, where it became a crowd favorite. This was the birth of the BMW Art Car Collection.

In the years that followed, renowned artists such as Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Esther Mahlangu, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Ólafur Elíasson and Jeff Koons added further BMW Art Cars to the collection, each in their own individual style. Most recently, Chinese multimedia artist Cao Fei and American John Baldessari each presented a BMW Art Car based on the BMW M6 GT3 in 2016 and 2017. The BMW Art Cars are not only shown at their home, the BMW Museum in Munich, but also travel around the world as part of international exhibitions.