HAMBURG, Germany — In the 1920s, Hamburg-born art historian Aby Warburg assembled his famed Mnemosyne Atlas — a vast, unfinished compendium of uncaptioned images on 40 categorized panels. Around the same time, he put together his Image Collection on the History of Astrology and Astronomy, a similar array of pictures on panels illustrating that humans have always looked to the heavens to understand themselves and the world, both scientifically and spiritually. Created for the Hamburg Planetarium’s opening in 1930, the latter work was shown there as World War II broke out. For decades, the original collection was considered lost, until art historian Uwe Fleckner found it in a trash heap in 1987. Its Fleckner-curated reconstruction is now on view in the uppermost portion of same planetarium as the cornerstone of From the Cosmos to the Commons — a constellation of exhibitions, public artworks, and discursive events orbiting Warburg’s opus in various locations in Hamburg until late August, in an ambitious project initiated by the city curator, Joanna Warsza. Installation view of Aby Warburg’s Image Collection in the Hamburg PlanetariumVisitors use flashlights to see Warburg’s densely decorated panels, arranged in a compact elliptical parcours in the normally inaccessible, low-light space atop the Planetarium. Reproductions of drawings and diagrams of the sky, and its many related legends, trace the histories of planetary thinking from antiquity to Kepler’s ideas of heliocentricity, Dante’s world view, Eastern and Western astrological symbolism, and much more. This is the point of departure for the show, which considers the wonderment, fear, and humility that the skies have always evoked in our species — but also the physical and spiritual orientation the heavens have consistently provided. In the same dark room, four contemporary artworks explore space, time, and how nonwestern cultures saw or see the heavens: “Blood Moon” (2025) by Raqs Media Collective asks us to consider the lunar aspects of time, and “Iktómiwiŋ (A Vision of Standing Cloud)” (2023/25), an intricate mandala-like floor piece by Oglála Lakȟóta artist KITE, records both time and dreams (this iteration is made of local stones). Outdoors, in the adjacent Stadtpark, 12 sculptural works are scattered around the lawns, trees, and clearings to be discovered by art lovers and joggers alike: Agnes Denes’s “Sunflower Fields”(2025) binds earth and sky with planted sun-loving blooms, while Heidi Voet’s “Hydra & the Orange Giant” (2025) brings the heavens down to earth — her pastel concrete sports balls lie in the grass in the Stadtpark’s old natural amphitheater reflecting the constellation Hydra. Still others look at divination, like Xul Solar’s “Tarot Deck” (1954), a set of oversized tarot cards on the park lawn; or cosmological legends, such as Hoda Tawakol’s “Cosmic Womb,” an installation depicting Nut, the Egyptian goddess who swallowed the sun each night, and rebirthed it each morning. Heidi Voet, “Hydra & the Orange Giant” (2025) in the Hamburg Stadtpark’s old amphitheaterAcross town at Kunsthaus Hamburg, a second part of the project, titled Between Stars and Signals, flips these themes around. While Warburg’s image collection places equal weight on rational and irrational, this group show highlights how the skies are now surveilling us: Record-keeping, precise data-gathering, and algorithms have, after all, dramatically shifted what humanity orients itself upon. Works including numbers 211 and 248 of Trevor Paglen’s Clouds series, which turns an algorithmic gaze to the sky, and Nolan Oswald Dennis’s “recurse 4 a late planet (lush)” (2025), a rich diagram that considers the connections between asteroids and rocks thrown in protest, seem to ask: What are our cosmologies today?Wars, climate chaos, and digital intelligence are just some of what make this moment in human history one of great communal disorientation, fragmented perception, and temporal confusion. From the Cosmos to the Commons doesn’t let us conveniently forget this, but rather reminds us, perhaps in a reassuring, life-affirming way, that humanity has struggled to explain and orient itself under the same skies since time immemorial. These works seem to nudge us to reconsider more intuitive ways of existing, even thriving, in creation’s vastness … together. KITE, “Iktómiwiŋ (A Vision of Standing Cloud)” (2023/25)Xul Solar, “Tarot Deck” (1954)Detail of Nolan Oswald Dennis’s “recurse 4 a late planet (lush)”From the Cosmos to the Commons continues at the Hamburg Planetarium (Linnering 1, Hamburg, Germany) and Kunsthaus Hamburg (Klosterwall 15, Hamburg, Germany) through August 24. The exhibition was organized by Joanna Warsza, who curated the Stadtpark portion. The Planetarium portion was curated by Uwe Fleckner and the Kunsthaus Hamburg portion was curated by Anna Nowak.