Brescia museums present 2025 exhibitions, from Matthias Stomer to Crepax

The year 2025 promises to be full of cultural and artistic events in Brescia: this morning the Brescia Musei Foundation presented an ambitious and varied program. The city wants to confirm itself as a leading cultural center, with an offer that ranges from major international exhibitions to the enhancement of local heritage, from the restoration of works of art to new technologies, not forgetting cinema and special events.

“Truly valuable, innovative and deeply in line with Brescia Musei’ long-standing cultural strategy is the 2025 program of museums, Nuovo Eden cinema and Brescia Castle,” stresses Francesca Bazoli, president of Fondazione Brescia Musei. “The focus on research around the artistic heritage that is the identity of our museums and the city never forgets the exploration of the strands that have popularized the exhibition galleries of Santa Giulia, such as great international photography or, more recently, contemporary illustration; as well as the constant updating of the Pinacoteca, with excellent hospitality.”

“Constant regeneration of the museum’s heritage with surgical updating of content and exhibition sections; major international events to bring photography, graphics, international contemporary to Brescia, without ever forgetting the authors and identity periods of Brescian culture such as the seventeenth century or Roman archaeology,” comments Stefano Karadjov, director of Brescia Musei: “we are still the Civic Museums; a ’cloud’ of almost daily events to make our museums the great platform, not very digital and very analog and concrete, of the well-being of Brescians for their education and free time; cultural welfare at all levels for fragile audiences and for inclusion, aware of the museum’s role as a facilitator of public policies of participation, looking at the most important international comparisons with fellow museologists who will gather in Brescia for the ICOM 2025 Annual Assembly in April. These are the strategic and value directions by which an incredibly rich 2025 Cultural Capital season has been developed. Thanks to my generous colleagues at Fondazione Brescia Musei for the great exercise accomplished together.”

The major exhibitions

The exhibition calendar opens with the first Italian anthological exhibition of Joel Meyerowitz, one of the masters of world photography, which will be hosted at the Museo di Santa Giulia. The exhibition A Sense of Wonder. Photographs 1962-2022, curated by Denis Curti, will trace, from March 25 to August 24, his career, from the 1960s to the present day, through more than 90 images that revolutionized the concept of street photography. Also at the Santa Giulia Museum, from Sept. 26, 2025 to Feb. 15, 2026, will be a monographic exhibition dedicated to Guido Crepax, the master of comics and the graphic novel, which will also explore his interests in literature, music, film, and theater. The exhibition, curated by Ilaria Bignotti and Alberto Fiz, in collaboration with the Crepax Archive, will present a selection of original plates, illustrations, board games and unpublished materials.

The Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo will instead host a dossier exhibition dedicated to Matthias Stomer, a Flemish painter who was one of Caravaggio’s most prolific followers, from Sept. 18, 2025 to Feb. 15, 2026. The exhibition, curated by Gianni Papi, will feature two previously unseen works recently granted on loan to the Foundation, along with a series of important loans. Again, from Sept. 26, 2025 to Feb. 15, 2026, at the Santa Giulia Museum will be the turn of Textbook Illustrators, curated by Anna Piergentili and Michela Valotti, in collaboration with Editrice La Scuola and the Brescia International Education Festival (II edition), which brings together the best of the city publisher’s very rich heritage of identity, consisting of more than 10.000 preparatory sketches for illustrated editions dedicated to young readers in Italian schools, mostly executed in tempera or watercolor, and preserved in the unique and original collection of the La Scuola publishing house, recently valorized. At the end of the year, appointment in November with the Brescia Peace Festival and the start of the Bicentennial of the discovery of the Winged Victory and the Brescian archaeological bronzes.

Regeneration of the city’s heritage

The Brescia Musei Foundation has a special focus on the enhancement of the city’s heritage, through restorations, new acquisitions and rearrangements. The Museum of Santa Giulia will see the restoration of the frescoes by the Master of Lentate in the chapel of St. John the Baptist and the display of the Martyrdom of Santa Giulia by Sante Cattaneo, a work found on the antiques market. It was located in ancient times in the very monastery of Santa Giulia: after the suppression in 1797 the work was dispersed and only recently re-emerged on the market (it was purchased by the state, thanks to the intervention of Emanuela Daffra, Superintendent of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, and entrusted to the Brescia Musei Foundation). The work will be restored before being exhibited.

The Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo will be permanently enriched by Giacomo Ceruti’s Filatrice e piccola mendicante, one of his masterpieces belonging to the Padernello cycle (this will make twenty works by the Brescian artist on display in the museum), and will host, thanks to the format PTM Andata e Ritorno, works by Giovanni Battista Gigola ( Two Socratic Scenes, two small miniatures on parchment, will arrive), Giuseppe Bezzuoli ( Galatea or Birth of Venus, a refined youthful painting commissioned in 1818 by Count Paolo Tosio, will be exhibited) and Ludovico Mazzolino ( Noli me tangere , returning from the exhibition The Sixteenth Century in Ferrara and so far remaining in Brescian deposits, will be exhibited).

Palazzo Loggia, seat of the City Hall, will also be transformed into a sui generis museum space, with the display of restored works of art, such as Pietro Maria Bagnadore’sAnnunciation and Baiardo wounded at the sack of Brescia in 1512 by Luigi Basiletti . And again, among the extra-moenia venues to open will be Palazzo Tosio, home of the Ateneo di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti di Brescia, which from June 3 to November 2025 will host Giacomo Grosso’s Nuda , which has been kept in Brescia’s storerooms for decades. The work, restored in 2023, is an interesting testimony to the specificities assumed by the genre of erotic painting in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Brescia Castle

Brescia Castle, with its park and museums, will be one of the protagonists of the cultural season. The Risorgimento Museum Lioness of Italy will offer four new virtual reality experiences, a Risorgimento history course dedicated to Garibaldi, and initiatives for the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation. Also coming to the museum in November will be a selection of striking watercolors that Giuseppe Nodari painted to document Giuseppe Garibaldi’s 1860 Sicilian expedition live.

In addition, the Castello will also host special events, such as Un anniversario stratopico! with Geronimo Stilton, the second edition of Mysteria - Festival of Fantastic Cultures, and the summer events of We Love Castello.

Not only exhibitions

Fondazione Brescia Musei is not limited to exhibitions and museums, but also offers a rich program of events, conferences, festivals and initiatives for all tastes. Noteworthy are the National Assembly of ICOM Italy, which will be held in Brescia April 4-6, and the study conference on the Visconti Age, which will be attended by scholars from all over Italy.

The Cinema Nuovo Eden, managed by the Foundation, will offer varied and inclusive programming, with reviews, art films, children’s cinema and special initiatives, such as La Nueva Ola Spanish and Latin American Film Festival and L’Eden d’Estate, the outdoor film arena at the Viridarium Park.

Brescia museums present 2025 exhibitions, from Matthias Stomer to Crepax

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