Exhibitions
Salone del Mobile.Milano enters into a three-year partnership with Art Basel Miami Beach and Art Basel Hong Kong: Italian design decks out the Collectors Lounge
10 design exhibitions to see before the year’s end
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"UNAROMA": Matteo Nasini, Neolithic Sunshine, 2018, installation view at Centro Arti Visive Pescheria, Pesaro, ph. Michele Sereni
They are all Italian and all in some way draw on the theme of memory. This is true even when they deal with current sporting events associated with the imminent inauguration of the Winter Olympics. There are ten of them and for the most part they are held in the most reserved cultural circuits, outside the mainstream. It’s even better when they’re out of town, bringing historic residences to life with gleams and flashes of good design
In Torri del Benaco as in Posillipo, in Venice as in Como, in L’Aquila as in Castelfranco Veneto, they are all carefully curated, attentive to the artists as well as the public, engaged in the story, riveted by the project that becomes narrative. Inside a tuff quarry and outside in the city, lost in sailors’ uniforms or challenged by the generosity of the pedestal, at the water’s edge and down into the abysses of memories. Without getting lost, but finding themselves enriched with experience. More human, too.
A FIOR D’ACQUA
“Memory is like something that rises from the bed of a lake and, just before emerging, becomes visible under the surface of the water, suspended between memory and image. The lake’s surface is a liminal space between air and water: it is there that memories are manifested, ready to turn into vision”, writes Oliviero Fiorenzi. The result of the iNEST – Spoke 6 artistic residency and part of the Citizen Engagement activities, the artist’s exhibition stems from a participatory process involving the inhabitants of Torri del Benaco in periods of co-design and shared workshops. The work conceived in this way becomes a community device and becomes the record of a collective history that evolves into a new, eternal narrative and poetic dimension.
Where Auditorium San Giovanni, Via per Albisano, 1, Torri del Benaco (VR)
When until 15/01/2026
ON DISPLAY!
Led by Annalisa Rosso, nine leading contemporary stage designers tackle the spaces of Palazzo Lezze Michiel, in the Venetian home of Silvia Fiorucci, founder and president of the Società delle Api. The theme is the display, no longer and not only an object of courtesy, but a presence capable of engaging the public’s gaze in reading and contemplating what it exhibits. Aldo Bakker, Valentina Cameranesi Sgroi, Formafantasma, Martino Gamper, Odd Matter, Parasite 2.0, Soft Baroque, Bethan Laura Wood and Zaven in dialogue with works by Silvia Bächli, John Baldessari, Chiara Camoni, Kueng Caputo, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Adriano Costa, Sylvie Fleury, Simone Forti, Enzo Mari, Nicolas Party, Sarah Pucci, Ettore Spalletti and Francis Upritchard (almost all from Silvia Fiorucci’s collection) operate through small gestures. Strengthened by an authorship that does not overpower, but lends itself generously.
Where Palazzo Lezze Michiel, Venice
When until 31/01/2026
I HAVEN’T KNOWN THE SILENCE OF THE STARS AND OF THE SEA
Curated by Giorgio Cellini and Elena Scovazzi Lucarda, this is a decidedly intriguing exhibition. Because it transforms the spaces of Lucarda, a historic Genoese clothing shop – a reference point for sailors since 1920 – into a museum of contemporary art. Because it explores the sea as an experience of travel and transformation, using metaphor to relate to mythology, the history of migrations and the artistic imagination. But also current events, with apt reflections on the experience of those who, driven by necessity or desire, travel across real and symbolic regions. The works of Daniele Coppola, Andrea Croce and Marco Strappato together with those by Cellini, to be discovered among the shelves and mannequins, have partly matured during the period of residency promoted by the Musei del Mare. In a circularity of thought and creativity that links up with ‘My museums are shops’, the project that takes art out of institutional and more conventional places.
Where Via Sottoripa, 62r, Genoa
When until 31/01/2026
ANDREA PAZIENZA. LA MATEMATICA DEL SEGNO
Curated by Giulia Ferracci and Oscar Glioti, the exhibition celebrates the artist on the seventieth anniversary of his birth by staging a story that goes to the heart of his creative process. How did his drawing transformed comics into a new art form? Here, walking through the rooms of the MAXXI, where 300 works are brought together, many of them never unpublished, we are invited to explore his expression. To discover it by starting from his handling, understood not as a simple line, but as the generative core of images, visual rhythm and a narrative tool. Organised chronologically and thematically, the exhibition explores the fundamental stages of the artist’s creative parabola, presenting the public with not only his innovative energy, but also his deep bond with Abruzzo, the land where he took his first steps as an artist. A study in depth is devoted to Convergenze, the Pescara art gallery that in 1973 hosted Pazienza’s first solo exhibition, a point of reference for many creatives in that artistic season.
Where MAXXI, L’Aquila
When from 6/12/2025 to 6/4/2026
FUORIPISTA
In the year of the Winter Olympics, the exhibition curated by 2050+ with Gres Art 671 becomes an invitation to discover – or rediscover – the mountains as a place of relationships, adaptations and shared imagination. The exhibition is divided into five stages: Olympics+, Winter Sports, Micro-Stories, Artificial Winter and Cryosphere are the sections chosen to guide the public through the new imagery of winter. Alongside contemporary works – some commissioned for the first time by Gres Art 671 – archival materials, installations, videos and photographs present a story made up of mountain peaks, ice, perseverance, fatigue, victories and defeats, as well as the changing geographies and visions that explore our relationship with the mountain environment.
Where Gres Art 671, Bergamo
When until 8/02/2026
Oliviero Fiorenzi, A fior d'acqua, ph. Matteo Natalucci
"ON DISPLAY!": Soft Baroque, Hold & Ipad Frame, 2023; Soft Baroque, Carved Aluminium Frame, 2019; Silvia Bachli, Untitled, 2012; Silvia Bachli, Untitled, 1993; ph. Federico Floriani
"I HAVEN’T KNOWN THE SILENCE OF THE STARS AND OF THE SEA": Giorgio Cellini, What you see when you see the sea, laser engraving on denim, 170 x 125 cm, 2025, ph. Michele Luigi Mulas
"La matematica del segno": Andrea Pazienza, Il metodo Cono Sud, 1983, Collection Elisabetta Pellerano
Gres Art 671, Fuoripista, ph. Diego De Pol
UNAROMA
Curated by Cristiana Perrella and Luca Lo Pinto, this major group exhibition presents an image of the hybrid, generative and endlessly vibrant art scene in Rome. Through different expressive languages, the exhibition tells the story of the city with a sequence shot that records its living and intergenerational cultural fabric. As in a film that alternates moments of stasis and action, the installation Parasite2.0 stages works and projects by over 70 artists of different generations in different media. There are three sequence shots: Set (on the ground floor, a sequence of works, largely unpublished); Live (on the first floor, hosting live interventions, concerts, DJ sets, conversations, workshops and screenings on a weekly basis); Off (a program of events in the Chamber of Deputies, commissioned by MACRO and held on their premises by some independent Roman venues).
Where MACRO, Rome
When from 11/12/2025 to 6/4/2026
PORTOFRANCO
A group exhibition of 23 artists (emerging and others) curated by Rossella Farinotti marks the start of a new season for Palazzo Soranzo Novello. Built in the 18th century, the palazzo, formerly a patrician residence and later the headquarters of the Banca Popolare di Castelfranco Veneto, is now at the centre of a broad process of cultural enhancement: a crossroads of memories, media and visions, the event on stage bears testimony to this. Between Venetian salons and interiors shaped by the aesthetics of the seventies, in courtyards and places of transit, the exhibition develops an immersive itinerary in which the works of Anna Galtarossa, for example, as well as Silvia Negrini and Maurizio Cattelan, dialogue with the stratified identity of the place. The itinerary comprises the hyper-realistic ‘Flea Market Lady’ by Duane Hanson, introducing a reflection on reality and illusion, the work by Goldschmied & Chiari, which transforms the Venetian salons into mirrors of light and colour, Fabio Roncato, who builds a story that merges sculpture, video and bronze fossil finds. And again Guido Guidi, Thomas Braida and Silvia Mariotti.
Where Palazzo Soranzo Novello, Castelfranco Veneto (TV)
When until 14/02/2026
ETTORE SOTTSASS. MISE EN SCÈNE
Alluding to the idea that Sottsass had of life, as Commedia dell’Arte with a fairly improvised script, the title evokes and anticipates an existential outlook that takes shape in the staging. Curated by Barbara Radice, Micaela Sessa and Studio Sottsass, with art direction by Christoph Radl, the exhibition opens a new chapter in research into Ettore Sottsass: a selection of 1,200 black and white and colour photographs taken between 1976 and 2007, the period between the year of the meeting between Barbara Radice and Ettore Sottsass and the year of his death. It is a varied landscape of their private and public life at home and around the world, for work and visits, with few distinctions.
Where Triennale Milano
When from 12/06/2025 to 15/02/2026
FRAGILE
Curated by Carla Giusti and Carla Langella, the exhibition, including its duration (a single day) coherently stages the theme of vulnerability in all its forms, physical and emotional, perceptual and mutational, of memory and urban, interpreted in relation to the generative force. Two impulses that are only seemingly opposed, capable together of transforming critical issues into strengths. And since nothing happens by chance in this project, even the setting for this selection of works plays a decisive narrative role: Palazzo Donn’Anna. Perhaps not everyone knows that, overlooking the sea of Naples, at the foot of the hill of Posillipo, the 17th-century residence was built over caves of tuff at the behest of Donna Carafa, wife of the viceroy Ramiro Nunez de Guzman, Duke of Medina de Las Torres. Formerly the studio of Ezio De Felice, architect and university professor, a leading figures in Italian museography, and now the headquarters of the Foundation dedicated to him, the building is a symbol of that vulnerability that makes Naples special: with its stratifications, its underground life and all the architecture that completes it below. Like life itself.
Where Palazzo Donn’Anna, Naples
When 18/12/2025 h 17:30
ART IS MY FAVE SPORT
Part of the Cultural Program of the Cultural Olympiad of the Fondazione Milano Cortina, an exhibition of contemporary art in some of the most iconic sports venues in the city. The curatorial research by Giovanni Berera and Paolo Bolpagni started from a study of the clubhouse of the Canottieri Lario, the Aeroclub Como, the Sinigaglia Swimming Pool and the legendary Sinigaglia Stadium. The Aeroclub Como will open its doors on 6 February 2026 with an exhibition devoted to Giuliano Collina and a video installation by Marzia Migliora, coinciding with the opening of the Olympic Games, while at the Sinigaglia Stadium, on the opening days of the exhibition, for the first time in Como, Maurizio Cattelan will display Stadium, the great table football created bythe artist in 1991. At the Sinigaglia Swimming Pool, Massimo Bartolini will present the neon work Mirrors Club, while a work by Deda Barattini, Untitled, from the holdings of our Foundation, will be presented at the Canottieri Lario.
Where City of Como
When until 22/3/2026
"UNAROMA": Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Die Vier von der Tankstelle (The Four from the Filling Station), 2023, courtesy the artists
Silvia Mariotti, view of the exhibition PORTOFRANCO, curated by Rossella Farinotti, Palazzo Soranzo Novello, Castelfranco Veneto, 15 November 2025-14 February 2026, ph. Cosimo Filippini
Ettore Sottsass, Milan, 1977
"Fragile": Luciano Romano, L’identità. Real Albergo dei Poveri Napoli, November 2025
Canottieri Lario G. Sinigaglia, ph. Lorenzo Butti
4 December 2025
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An account of the Roundtables at the Milan Design (Eco) System 2025
Ten Thematic Tables, ten Content Leaders, with over a hundred stakeholders taking part. This was the 2025 edition of the encounter devoted to the research project measuring the impact and legacy of the Salone del Mobile and the events across the city
