Milan, here are the exhibitions 2022-2023: Renaissance Sculpture, Monet, Mondrian, Bosch

The program of exhibitions of Milan’s civic museums for the 2021-2022 season was presented today in Milan. A calendar that will begin as early as the end of the summer, with major exhibitions investigating various themes from antiquity to the present day. “A new calendar that, as early as this summer, will present exhibitions of high scientific profile and curatorial value,” said during the presentation the City of Milan’s councillor for culture, Filippo Del Corno. “The extraordinary situation we are experiencing has caused, of necessity, a rethinking of the previously announced exhibition programming, but the work that has never been interrupted and the constant attention of all the civic institutes on the evolution of the health emergency have made it possible to reschedule the exhibition projects, preserving almost all of them and proposing new ones. So the fall will start again with many projects, ranging from ancient to contemporary art, from a monographic focus on an artist to a fresco of an era, from the development of a theme throughout art history to twinning with museums around the world, from sculpture to painting, from installation to performance, from photography to graphic design.”

So let’s see what thecultural offerings of Milan’s museums will be. The Castello Sforzesco from July 21 will host in the Sale Viscontee the major exhibition dedicated to Italian Renaissance sculpture. The exhibition, studied and designed jointly by the Castello Sforzesco and the Louvre, is entitled The Body and the Soul, from Donatello to Michelangelo (curated by Marc Bormand, Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi, Francesca Tasso) and is a lunge into more than sixty years of art history, particularly from the second half of the 15th century and the early 16th century, when Donatello, Leonardo and Raphael, perfect interpreters of the Renaissance, worked in Italy. Also at the castle, from September to December 2021 here is the exhibition Tiepolo, Canaletto and the Masters of the Venetian Eighteenth Century in the Drawings and Prints of Castello Sforzesco, curated by Francesca Mariano, Eleonora Scianna: as part of the rotating exhibition program of the holdings of the Castello Sforzesco’s archives of graphic works (Gabinetto dei Disegni and Civica Raccolta delle Stampe “Achille Bertarelli”), the fall exhibition is dedicated to an in-depth study of the Venetian eighteenth century, with some works by Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, Antonio Canal known as Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto and Giovan Battista Piazzetta, in an itinerary between caricature and veduta. On July 23, it will be the turn of the Museo del Novecento, which will open in the rooms dedicated to temporary exhibitions the major retrospective devoted to Mario Sironi (curated by Elena Pontiggia and Anna Maria Montaldo), exploring the artist’s main creative periods: the young Symbolist one, the Futurist season, the Metaphysical moment, the Classical season and the foundation of the Novecento Italiano, the decoration of the 1930s, and the dialogue with the Informal of the last period of his life.

The exhibition season then resumes in September with other major exhibitions: in fact, the exhibition dedicated Claude Monet opens on September 18 at the Royal Palace. The exhibition, curated by Marianne Mathieu, is part of the “Museums of the World at the Royal Palace” project, and the twinning this year is with the Marmottan Museum in Paris, which has the largest collection of Monet’s works, from which 50 paintings have been selected for an in-depth look at the theme of light. Among the works on display are masterpieces such as Water Lilies, The Walk at Argenteuil, On Trouville Beach and Reflections on the Thames. Charing Cross. A nature focus on water lilies will also be held at the Civic Aquarium. Also at the Royal Palace, another major exhibition opens to the public on Oct. 19, that dedicated to Magic Realism, curated by Gabriella Belli and Valerio Terraroli. The exhibition aims to present the artistic movement of Magic Realism, a fundamental strand of Italian painting that developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Magic Realism transposes into painting the climate of instability and restlessness that characterized Italian society between the two world wars. Protagonists of the poetics of Magic Realism are the works of Felice Casorati and Giorgio de Chirico, but also Carlo Carrà and Gino Severini, who proclaim the need for the recovery of the plastic values of the art of the past. Among the major exponents and most appreciated representatives of Magic Realism are also Cagnaccio di San Pietro, Antonio Donghi, Ubaldo Oppi, Achille Funi and Piero Marussig. The fall openings conclude at the Palazzo Reale with a large group exhibition entitled Corpus Domini, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti, whose itinerary explores, through the works of contemporary artists, many of which have never been exhibited in Italy, the multiplicity of the representation of the human being through the exhibition of the body and, above all, its disappearance. A project that investigates the relationship between art and the body, a theme dear to Lea Vergine, who is remembered in the exhibition with a special tribute.

Also resuming in September is the exhibition season at the MUDEC Museo delle Culture, which on September 2 opens the exhibition Disney. The Timeless Art of Storytelling, curated by The Walt Disney Animation Research Library. The exhibition presents an in-depth look at the extraordinary talent of Disney Studios artists in the art of timeless storytelling. Over the decades, the Studios have been able to transform ancient stories by adapting them to the spirit of the times through the creation of fascinating characters, enchanted worlds, and timely themes. As much as their message has remained unchanged over time, storytelling techniques and methods have evolved. The exhibition will give children and adults a chance to explore behind the scenes of Disney masterpieces and understand how an animated film is created. And also in the fall, the first monographic exhibition dedicated in Milan to Piet Mondrian, curated by Benno Tempel, centered on his landscape painting, opens in the MUDEC exhibition spaces. The exhibition, produced in collaboration with the Kunstmuseum in The Hague, illustrates the Dutch master’s transition from the figurative phase to abstractionism and is therefore an invitation to discover a Mondrian “other” than the better known one (a transition also discussed on these pages, and to rediscover his masterpieces.

Light is also the protagonist at the GAM Gallery of Modern Art, and its reflections are investigated in the exhibition Divisionisms. Two Collections (curated by Giovanna Ginex), through a comparison of some Divisionist masterpieces belonging to the museum’s collection and a selection of works from the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Tortona Art Gallery. The exhibition opens to the public on November 19.

The PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea launches into the fall season with a new exhibition project that opens to the public Nov. 24: this is the first solo exhibition in Italy by Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera, curated by Diego Sileo, who will confront the public with a series of installations and performances centered on the exploration of power structures and the ways in which art can be applied to everyday political life. Palazzo Dugnani opens extraordinarily to the public for a special project related to the theme of climate change. Planet. The World, the Climate Emergency, Solutions, curated by Telmo Pievani, is in fact the title of the exhibition that features a series of photographs by great artists, including Sebastiao Salgado, Frans Lanting, and Paolo Pellegrin, who have immortalized situations and places in the world affected by major climate change. The images are commented on by students or university researchers who are acquiring the skills to be able in 2050 to take charge of a profoundly transformed planet. The exhibition is part of the schedule of side events at the Pre-COP 26 conference.

Many exhibition projects will also be set up during this fall in the House Museums. In particular, Casa della Memoria is hosting from Sept. 4 Paola Di Bello’s photographic exhibition Home less home (curated by Francesco Zanot), a series of photographs of the “homes” of the “homeless”; Casa Boschi Di Stefano offers (from Nov. 23) a lunge on the work of the landlady, Marieda, presenting her ceramic sculptures made in the workshop of the House itself; while in December the Studio Museo Francesco Messina is exhibiting the expressionist nativities of Salvatore Incorpora. The year ends with the traditional Christmas exhibition at Palazzo Marino, this year dedicated to 16th-century Lombard art. It brings together the cities of Milan, Bergamo and Brescia, offering works by Lotto, Moretto, Savoldo and Moroni.

Here, however, is a foretaste of 2022: at Palazzo Reale, the exhibition on Titian entitled Titian and the Image of Woman: Beauty, Love, Poetry, curated by Sylvia Ferino Pagden (February to May 2022), an exhibition produced in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, will also include works by Tintoretto, Veronese, Palma the Elder, and will be dedicated to the theme of female beauty; at MUDEC, Ordinary - Extraordinary (February to May 2022), which investigates the modes of artistic representation of men and women originating from the African continent in northern Italy between the 16th and 19th centuries (through the exhibition of different works it will be possible to reflect on the perception of otherness, but beyond the evolution of depictions of the exotic, the public will be able to catch fragments of lost biographies of people who found themselves living experiences of uprooting and migration); also at the Palazzo Reale, from February to July 2022 will be the turn of Joaquín Sorolla (curated by Micol Forti and Consuelo Luca de Tena), the first major exhibition in Italy dedicated to the Spanish master of light, realized in collaboration with the Museo Sorolla and the Sorolla Museum Foundation: the Spanish artist fixes on canvas the beaches of the Mediterranean and the people who crowd them, giving us an original glimpse of the Belle Époque, and he is an artist who anticipates the techniques of photography by giving unprecedented glimpses, a protagonist of luminism and a portraitist of great international fame; at the Museo del Novecento, from April to August 2022 it will be the turn of Aldo Rossi (curated by Chiara Spangaro and Fondazione Aldo Rossi), with an exhibition that presents for the first time the set of objects and furniture, prototypes and design projects created by Aldo Rossi; the MUDEC from April to September 2022 hosts an exhibition on David LaChapelle (curated by Denis Curti and Reiner Opoku) that stems from the idea that a new and better world is possible if human beings become aware of their mistakes and begin to respect each other, different cultures, and nature; at the Palazzo Reale, from June to September 2022, the anthological exhibition on Grazia Varisco, curated by Marco Meneguzzo, in which 60 years of research and project on aspects of multi-sensory perception translated into active aesthetic experiences are traced.

For fall 2022, three more major exhibitions are coming to the Royal Palace: the first retrospective in Italy of Max Ernst, curated by Martina Mazzotta and Jürgen Pech, with about two hundred works including paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, books, and jewelry from international museums, foundations and private collections; the exhibition on Napoleonic Milan curated by Fernando Mazzocca with the three great protagonists of art in the capital of the Kingdom ofItaly, namely Andrea Appiani, Antonio Canova and Giacomo Raffaelli; a major exhibition on Hyeronimus Bosch and Southern Europe, curated by Bernard Aikema and Fernando Checa, which will illustrate Bosch’s success as a creator of fantastic visions in relation to the collecting trends of the time and artistic reception by the Spanish and Italian Renaissance. Important links with Bosch’s art can indeed be seen in prominent works by Titian, El Greco, Savoldo, among others. The exhibition will thus for the first time offer Italian and international audiences the opportunity to familiarize themselves with Bosch’s role at the height of the so-called “anti-Renaissance” that had taken hold in Europe.

Pictured: Hyeronimus Bosch (attributed), Battle Elephant (oil on canvas, 187 x 235 cm; Florence, Palatine Gallery, Palazzo Pitti)

Milan, here are the exhibitions 2022-2023: Renaissance Sculpture, Monet, Mondrian, Bosch

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