2000 The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presented Helnwein's painting "Mouse I" (1995, oil and acrylic on canvas, 210 cm x 310 cm) at the exhibition The Darker Side of Playland: Childhood Imagery from the Logan Collection...
Alicia Miller commented on Helnwein's work in Artweek: "...For children, not understanding what really to be afraid of, these dreams portend some pain and disturbance lurking into the landscape. Perhaps nothing in the exhibition exemplifies this better than Gottfried Helnwein's 'Mickey'. His portrait of Disney's favorite mouse occupies an entire wall of the gallery; rendered from an oblique angle, his jaunty, ingenuous visage looks somehow sneaky and suspicious. His broad smile, encasing a row of gleaming teeth, seems more a snarl or leer. This is Mickey as Mr. Hyde, his hidden other self now disturbingly revealed. ...

One-man show at Robert Sandelson Gallery, London..
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"The American paintings", Helnwein works on a series of blue monochromatic paintings, a surreal vision of America inspired by film noir and newspaper-photography from the 50ies and 60ies.
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Inspired by Helnwein's early paintings, Argentinian writer Rodrigo M. Malmsten creates the play "Kleines Helnwein".
Premiere at the Theatro San Martin in Buenos Aires

The Ludwig Museum Cologne shows Helnwein's Installation "Poems" in the exhibition "Augenblick und Endlichkeit - Das von der Photographie geprägte Jahrhundert.
40 great photographers of the 20th century. ...

Gottfried at the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, "Augenblick und Endlichkeit"

Los Angeles County Museum of Art , "Ghost in the Shell", Photography and the Human Soul, 1850-2000, group show.
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Gottfried Helnwein at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , "Ghost in the Shell"

1999 "Apokalypse", one man show and Installation at the Gothic Dominican-Church in Krems, Austria.
County Museum of Lower Austria ...

"20 Years Modernism, Modern Masters and Contemporary Art", Modernism Gallery San Francisco.

Innovation / Imagination: 50 years of Polaroid Photography,Anselm Adams Center, San Francisco.

Photo session with Chuck Close in New York.

1998 One-man show at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku, Finland.

Collector Fritz Gruber donates the "Poems"- Installation to the Ludwig Museum in Cologne.
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Collector Fritz Gruber donates the "Poems"- Installation to the Ludwig Museum in Cologne

One-man show at Modernism Gallery, San Francisco.

"Götter, Helden und Idole" ("Gods, Heros und Idols"), Ludwig Institut Schloss Oberhausen, Germany.
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1997 Retrospective at the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg,.
The collectors Peter and Irene Ludwig donate 53 works of Helnwein to the Museum Ludwig in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg ...

Gottfried Helnwein, 1997 Retrospective at the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

"Die Hamletmaschine" by Heiner Müller.
Version by Gert Hof and Gottfried Helnwein, with Les Tambours du Bronx and Caspar Brötzmann
47th Berliner Festwochen, Arena, Berlin and Muffathalle, Munich

Helnwein's painting "Dresden" at the Opening group show of the Ludwig Museum in the National Chinese Museum of Fine Art, Beijing..

Helnwein moves with his family to Ireland..
At first he lives in Dublin and in 1998 he acquires a castle in County Tipperary where lives and works since then. ...