20 exhibitions to see during the Christmas vacations 2023

What exhibitions to see during the Christmas vacations 2023? Ancient art, modern art, contemporary art: up and down Italy there really is everything. Some exhibitions are closing in January, so it may be your last chance. Others have just opened, so you will be among the first to visit them. In any case, we have selected twenty exhibitions from those we have visited recently (yes, we have visited all the exhibitions we list below) and these in our opinion are among the most interesting. For more ideas, take a look at our exhibition-finding search engine.

1. Turner at Venaria Reale

The Reggia di Venaria is hosting until January 28, 2024, on the second floor of the Rooms of the Arts, the exhibition Turner. Landscapes of Mythology, curated by British art historian Anne Lyles, dedicated to British Romantic painter Joseph Mallord William Turner (London, 1775 - 1851), thus continuing the prestigious collaboration with the Tate UK after the exhibition held last year at the Reggia di Venaria dedicated to John Constable. On display will be more than forty works, including oil paintings, drawings, etchings and watercolors (the famous color beginnings) made in the 1920s and coming from the British institution, in which Turner expresses not only his predilection for landscape painting, but also his passion for themes related to Greco-Roman mythology.

Where and when: Venaria Reale, Reggia di Venaria, Oct. 13, 2023 to Jan. 28, 2024 Click here for more information | Read our review

2. Francesco Hayez in Turin

Turin’s Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAM) is dedicating a major exhibition to Francesco Hayez (Venice, 1791 - Milan, 1882), scheduled from October 17, 2023 to April 1, 2024, and entitled Hayez. The Workshop of the Romantic Painter. The exhibition, curated by Fernando Mazzocca and Elena Lissoni, makes art, history and politics intertwine, accompanying the public to discover the artist’s world, inside the painter’s workshop, to reveal its techniques and secrets. An original itinerary that compares paintings and drawings, with more than 100 works from prestigious public and private collections to which are added some important paintings by the artist kept at GAM.

Where and when: Turin, GAM, October 17, 2023 to April 1, 2024 Click here for more information | Read our review

3. Giorgio Morandi in Milan

The exhibition that Milan dedicates to Giorgio Morandi (Bologna, 1890 - 1964), one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, with the intention of celebrating the elective relationship between the city and the Bolognese painter more than thirty years after the last exhibition, presents to the public about one hundred and twenty works thanks to loans from important public institutions and prestigious private collections. Through the works on display, visitors will be able to retrace the artist’s entire career: fifty years of activity, from 1913 to 1963. In terms of extent and quality of the works present, the exhibition, curated by Maria Cristina Bandera, aims to be among the most important and complete retrospectives on the Bolognese painter realized in recent decades.

Where and when: Milan, Palazzo Reale, from October 5, 2023 to February 4, 2024 Click here for more information

4. Giovanni Battista Moroni in Milan

Dedicated to Giovanni Battista Moroni (Albino, c. 1520 - 1578) is the winter exhibition 2023-2024 at the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan. Running from December 6, 2023 to April 1, 2024 at the Gallerie d’Italia in Piazza Scala, the exhibition Moroni (1521-1580). A Portrait of His Time is a monograph on the great artist from Bergamo, among the greatest interpreters of Lombard Renaissance painting, curated by Arturo Galansino and Simone Facchinetti. The author also of significant devotional works, which are featured in the exhibition, Moroni is best known, however, for his innovative work as a portraitist. Many of the portraits made by the artist exhibited in Milan defined as “portraits in action,” modern depictions of characters who, through a gesture, a glance, come into contact with the viewer, overcoming the emotional distance and static nature of official portraiture.

Where and when: Milan, Gallerie d’Italia, from December 6, 2023 to April 1, 2024 Click here for more information

5. Van Gogh in Milan

Was Vincent van Gogh a painter moved solely by his feeling, as some shoddy exhibitions have told us, and as the vulgate portrays him? Not at all: Van Gogh was a very up-to-date artist, he was an avid reader, he knew contemporary art, he had literary interests. He was, in essence, an educated painter. And to dispel the stereotypes around his figure intervenes an exhibition, entitled precisely Van Gogh. Cultured Painter, dedicated precisely to the relationship between Van Gogh and his cultural sources. The appointment is at Mudec in Milan from September 22, 2023 to January 28, 2024. The exhibition is curated by art historian Francesco Poli, Mariella Guzzoni, researcher and curator of the Van Gogh: Living with Books thread that runs throughout the exhibition, and Aurora Canepari, conservator esponsabile of the Museo d’Arte Orientale Edoardo Chiossone in Genoa, curator of the Van Gogh and Japanism section.

Where and when: Milan, Mudec, from September 22, 2023 to January 28, 2024 Click here for more information | Read our review

6. El Greco in Milan

For the first time in the Lombard capital, the exhibition project presents more than forty works by the famous artist, making use of prestigious international loans. A unique opportunity to discover his production in the light of the latest research. The exhibition reconsiders the impact of Italian models in the artist’s training and intends to interpret Toledo’s last period in terms of a conscious recovery of a broadly Byzantine compositional approach. The itinerary will be divided into sections designed always to focus on the artist’s relationship with the places where he lived and at the same time to offer visitors with immediacy a precise historical-biographical reconstruction. At the same time, a series of close comparisons with great Roman and Venetian painting will bring out the powerful theme of the labyrinth, underscoring how El Greco’s life was a kind of immense training novel set among the cultural capitals of the Mediterranean.

Where and when: Milan, Palazzo Reale, October 11, 2023 to February 11, 2024 Click here for more information | Read our review

7. Fabrizio Plessi in Brescia

Fabrizio Plessi presents from June 9, 2023 to January 7, 2024 the unprecedented project Plessi marries Brixia<, celebrating a marriage with the city and its inhabitants, delivering to the public a message of responsibility and awareness of Brescia’s historical, archaeological and iconographic heritage. It is an immersive journey consisting of installations, video projections and monumental digital environments, specially designed for the Archaeological Park of Roman Brescia and the Museum of Santa Giulia. It is a journey intended to highlight the city’s vestiges and heritage, reinterpreting them through Plessi’s characteristic technological and multimedia alphabet, i.e., with light, sound and moving images, and is completed with an exhibition of original drawings, plates and project sketches.

Where and when: Brescia, Museo di Santa Giulia, June 9, 2023 to January 7, 2024 Click here for more information | Read our review

8. The Sperone Collection in Rovereto

In this exhibition, the Mart brings together for the first time four hundred works from the private collection of Gian Enzo Sperone. Among the world’s leading gallery owners, Gian Enzo Sperone, born in 1939, opened his first gallery in Turin in 1964 and brought the new great American art to Italy. From the beginning, he flanked the most innovative avant-gardes, untethered from the past, preferring contemporary languages and trends. He frequented the circles of European and American intellectuals and with Konrad Fischer inaugurated venues in Italy and abroad, including the current New York venue, the Sperone Westwater Gallery, designed by archistar Norman Foster. Parallel to his work as a contemporary art dealer, Sperone also devoted himself to collecting, resulting in an endless and contradictory collection, in which he counted works and artifacts from different periods, from the 14th century to the present day, and from numerous countries, from Europe to Asia.

Where and when: Rovereto, Mart, October 26, 2023 to March 3, 2024 Click here for more information

9. The Fasti of Elisabetta Farnese in Piacenza.

An exhibition dedicated to Elisabeth Farnese (Parma, 1692 - Aranjuez, 1766), the last princess of Parma and Piacenza of the House of Farnese, and queen consort of Spain as the wife of Philip V: this is the one scheduled at the Civic Museums of Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza from December 2, 2023 to April 7, 2024. The exhibition, organized by the Civic Museums of Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza with the support of the Municipality of Piacenza and in collaboration with the publishing house Electa, is conceived and curated by art historians Antonella Gigli and Antonio Iommelli, is entitled I Fasti di Elisabetta Farnese. Portrait of a Queen and revolves around a nucleus of canvases, now known as the “Fasti di Elisabetta,” executed in the first half of the 18th century by court painter Ilario Mercanti known as lo Spolverini (Parma, 1657 - Piacenza, 1734). For the first time, after nearly three hundred years since their migration to Naples (the city where Charles of Bourbon, son of Elisabeth Farnese and Philip V of Spain, transferred the Fasti and most of the artistic treasures that belonged to the Farnese family) six paintings, formerly part of the cycle, will be exhibited in Piacenza, granted extraordinarily on loan for four months by the Royal Palace of Caserta and the City of Parma.

Where and when: Piacenza, Civic Museums of Palazzo Farnese, from December 2, 2023 to April 7, 2024 Click here for more information

10. Achille Funi in Ferrara

The Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara is hosting the exhibition Achille Funi. A Master of the Twentieth Century between History and Myth, curated by Nicoletta Colombo, Serena Redaelli and Chiara Vorrasi and organized by the Ferrara Arte Foundation and the Art Museum Service of the Municipality of Ferrara. A wide-ranging anthological exhibition dedicated to one of the great artists of the 20th century, Virgilio Socrates Achille Funi (Ferrara, 1890 - Appiano Gentile, 1972), who traversed as a protagonist the main movements that characterized Italian culture in the first half of the 20th century. After distinguishing himself in the moderate wing of Futurism, Funi rose to prominence among the great interpreters of Magical Realism, the modern classicism of the Novecento and the muralism of the 1930s, while maintaining a marked autonomy. In love with classical myths and Renaissance wisdom, the artist drew on the formal values of the ancient figurative tradition as well as the more contemporary language of Cézanne, Picasso, Derain, and de Chirico.

Where and when: Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, October 28, 2023 to February 25, 2024 Click here for more information

11. CCCP in Reggio Emilia

One of the groups that have most marked the history of Italian rock. I CCCP - Fedeli alla Linea, the historic punk band that told in its own way and according to its own point of view all the contradictions of the 1980s, is the protagonist of an exhibition that, in Reggio Emilia, celebrates the 40th anniversary of the group’s birth. Taking up, in the title, the phrase from one of their famous pieces (Spara Jurij), the exhibition Felicitazioni! CCCP-Faithful to the Line 1984-2024 can be visited from October 12, 2023 to February 11, 2024 at the Chiostri di San Pietro in Reggio Emilia and is organized by the Palazzo Magnani Foundation in collaboration with the Municipality of Reggio Emilia.

Where and when: Reggio Emilia, Chiostri di San Pietro, from October 12, 2023 to February 11, 2024 Click here for more information | Read our review

12. Puppets and the Avant-Garde in Reggio Emilia

The exhibition Marionettes and the Avant-Garde will be on view until March 17, 2024 at Palazzo Magnani in Reggio Emilia. Picasso, Depero, Klee, Sarzi, curated by James M. Bradburne, a member of the Scientific Committee of the Palazzo Magnani Foundation. The exhibition revolves around the concept of the “fourth wall,” or the capacity for emotional involvement that makes a successful performance a reality capable of immersing the viewer in the story being staged. When a puppet or marionette breaks the fourth wall, it wins the audience’s trust, giving the show the power to blur the division between stage and world, between art and life.

Where and when: Reggio Emilia, Palazzo Magnani, November 17 to March 17, 2024 Click here for more information

13. Mario Sironi in Modena

The BPER Banca Gallery in Modena presents in its exhibition spaces until February 4, 2024 the exhibition Mario Sironi. Solemnity and Torment, curated by Daniela Ferrari. The exhibition focuses on a corpus of about forty works by Mario Sironi (Sassari, 1885 - Milan, 1961). A nucleus of these is presented on this occasion for the first time outside Sardinia: these are works created between 1926 and 1958 and belonging to a rich Sironi collection donated by the artist’s companion Mimì Costa to Banco di Sardegna - Gruppo BPER Banca. There are also works from prestigious private collections, the Mario Sironi Association and the Mario Sironi Archive.

Where and when: Modena, The BPER Banca Gallery, from September 15, 2023 to February 4, 2024 Click here for more information

14. Hendrick ter Brugghen in Modena

Through January 14, 2024, the Estense Galleries of Modena presents Ter Brugghen. From Holland to Italy in the Footsteps of Caravaggio, the first major Italian exhibition dedicated to the Dutch painter Hendrick ter Brugghen (The Hague, 1588 - Utrecht, 1629). The exhibition curated by Federico Fischetti and Gianni Papi aims to retrace the artist’s extraordinary stay in Italy, an experience that strongly influenced his painting. The discovery of Ter Brugghen’s Italian phase is a recent event. Although it was known that the painter had resided in Rome and Italy for at least six or seven years, between about 1607-1608 and 1614, studies had not delved deeply into this early period, which instead, like all the experiences lived by Nordic painters in the papal capital, could be assumed to be crucial for his path.

Where and when: Modena, Gallerie Estensi, October 13, 2023 to January 14, 2024 Click here for more information | Read our review

15. Carlotta Gargalli in Bologna

The Museo Ottocento Bologna kicks off a series of monographic exhibitions on women painters from Emilia and begins with an almost forgotten figure, that of Carlotta Gargalli (Bologna, 1788 - Rome, 1840), a talented neoclassical artist who, until January 7, 2024, is the protagonist of the exhibition Carlotta Gargalli (1788-1840). A Bolognese Painter in the Rome of Canova, curated by Ilaria Chia and Francesca Sinigaglia. The exhibition is designed to emphasize the modernity of this artist, who thanks to her talent and determination was able to establish herself in an artistic context at the time almost entirely dominated by men.

Where and when: Bologna, Museo Ottocento, October 31, 2023 to January 7, 2024 Click here for more information

16. Bertozzi&Casoni in Imola

A major exhibition dedicated to Bertozzi&Casoni in the city of the great ceramic duo, Imola. Entitled Bertozzi&Casoni. Tranche de vie the exhibition that, over three venues, traces the entire story of the duo formed by Giampaolo Bertozzi (Borgo Tossignano, 1957) and Stefano Dal Monte Casoni (Lugo di Romagna, 1961 - Imola, 2023) with an event involving all three of Imola’s public museums: Palazzo Tozzoni, Museo San Domenico and Rocca Sforzesca. Curated by Diego Galizzi, director of Imola Musei, the exhibition, scheduled from Oct. 28, 2023 to Feb. 18, 2024, is organized by the Municipality of Imola - Imola Musei, thanks to the support of several local entities including the Cooperativa Ceramica di Imola, the project’s main partner.

Where and when: Imola, Museo San Domenico, Palazzo Tozzoni and Rocca Sforzesca, from October 28, 2023 to February 18, 2024 Click here for more information

17. Anish Kapoor in Florence

Palazzo Strozzi hosts Untrue Unreal, a major exhibition conceived and realized with Anish Kapoor, the celebrated master who revolutionized the idea of sculpture in contemporary art. Curated by Arturo Galansino, general director of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, the exhibition offers a journey through monumental installations, intimate environments and disturbing forms, creating an original and engaging dialogue with the architecture and the public of Palazzo Strozzi. Through historical works and recent productions, the exhibition becomes an invitation to enter into direct dialogue with Kapoor’s art in its versatility, discordance, entropy and ephemerality. Palazzo Strozzi becomes a place concave and convex, whole and shattered at the same time in which visitors are called to question their senses.

Where and when: Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, October 7, 2023 to February 4, 2024 Click here for more information

18. The Altar of the Fatherland in Rome

From October 26, 2023 to February 25, 2024, the VIVE - Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia presents in the Zanardelli Room of the Vittoriano the exhibition The Goddess Rome and the Altar of the Fatherland. Angelo Zanelli and the Invention of the Symbols of United Italy, curated by Valerio Terraroli, in collaboration with the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, the Soprintendenza speciale Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio di Roma and the Fondazione Brescia Musei. The exhibition aims to celebrate the conclusion of the restoration campaign of the frieze of the Altare della Patria created by Lombard sculptor Angelo Zanelli (San Felice di Scovolo, March 17, 1879 - Rome, 1942). The focus of the exhibition is the Goddess Rome, the central figure of the frieze itself, in axis with the equestrian monument of Victor Emmanuel II, and the visual centerpiece of the entire Vittoriano, the origins and developments of its iconography and the influences this image has exerted over time.

Where and when: Rome, VIVE - Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia, Oct. 26, 2023 to Feb. 25, 2024 Click here for more information

19. Phidias in Rome

Until May 5, 2024, the Capitoline Museums - Villa Caffarelli in Rome, welcome for the first time in Italy a monographic exhibition dedicated to Phidias, the greatest Greek sculptor of the classical age linked to the construction and decoration of the Parthenon. Promoted by Roma Capitale, Assessorato alla Cultura, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, and curated by Claudio Parisi Presicce with the organization of Zètema Progetto Cultura, the exhibition inaugurates the cycle of five exhibitions I Grandi Maestri della Grecia Antica, which aims to introduce the main protagonists of Greek sculpture to the general public.

Where and when: Rome, Capitoline Museums, November 24, 2023 to May 5, 2024 Click here for more information

20. William Kentridge in Palermo

The great South African artist William Kentridge (Johannesburg, 1955) presents his new sound installation with projection in Palermo: it is titled You Whom I Could Not Save and gives the title to the South African artist’s solo exhibition on view until January 12, 2024 at Palazzo Branciforte. The work is offered along with 16 previously unseen drawings made on a 19th-century Sicilian account book, the video work Sibyl (2020), bronze and painted bronze sculptures, and a sequence of tapestries. The project, created specifically for Palermo and to be inaugurated on the occasion of the Days of the Contemporary, is curated by art historians Giulia Ingarao and Alessandra Buccheri, conceived by Antonio Leone, artistic director of ruber.contemporanea, and supported by Fondazione Sicilia, with coordination by Sicily Art and Culture.

Where and when: Palermo, Palazzo Branciforte, from Oct. 8, 2023 to Jan. 12, 2024 Click here for more information

20 exhibitions to see during the Christmas vacations 2023

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