Fondazione Prada, 2024 exhibitions include an extensive retrospective on Pino Pascali in Milan

Fondazione Prada announces the exhibition projects and main activities that will take place in 2024 in the permanent venues in Milan and Venice and in the outdoor spaces in Shanghai and Tokyo: among the planned exhibitions are a major retrospective dedicated to Pino Pascali in the Milan venue and, among the activities, the new Human Brains initiative dedicated to neuroscience and the proposed Godard Cinema.

“Also in the months to come, our institution will try to address issues of the present from multiple perspectives, involving artists of different generations and from heterogeneous backgrounds, to identify tools that challenge current opinions and help us think more deeply,” said Miuccia Prada, president and director of the foundation.

Inside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, Osservatorio will host Miranda July: New Society, the first museum exhibition dedicated to Miranda July (U.S., 1974), curated by Mia Locks, from March 7 to Oct. 14, 2024. The exhibition features a new video project, F.A.M.I.L.Y. (Falling Apart Meanwhile I Love You), and will trace three decades of production by the American artist, filmmaker and writer, including a selection of performances, web-based works and installations. New Society investigates Miranda July’s ongoing exploration of risk and intimacy through performance projects, participatory works and technology. The exhibition will be accompanied by the first comprehensive retrospective of her filmography in Italy to be held at Cinema Godard. The exhibition will include three feature films, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), The Future (2011) and Kajillionaire (2020), and will be complemented by a selection of short films and unreleased works on the big screen. Miranda July’s work will also be the focus of an exhibition presented from April to July 2024 at Prada Aoyama spaces in Tokyo.

Prada Rong Zhai, on the other hand, will host from March 22 to May 14, 2024 the solo exhibition The Promise, dedicated to Michaël Borremans (Belgium, 1963). In the spaces of the historic 1918 residence, a selection of his pictorial works will be presented. In his work, Borremans observes the human condition by creating absurd juxtapositions and an ambiguous tension between his refined technique and the subjects portrayed. This feeling of anachronism will find a correspondence in the intimate and domestic dimension of Prada Rong Zhai’s exhibition spaces.

An extensive retrospective exhibition dedicated to Pino Pascali (Bari, Italy, 1935 - Rome, 1968) will be on view from March 28 to September 23, 2023, at the main Milan venue. Curated by Mark Godfrey, the exhibition will include more than fifty works by the artist from Italian and international museums and important private collections. The exhibition project will consist of four sections. The first will examine the approach with which Pascali made his exhibitions from 1965 to 1968, creating original environments rather than simply selections of works from his studio. The second section will explore his most significant interventions in important group exhibitions of those years and include works by artists who exhibited with him. The third section will focus on Pascali’s interaction with his sculptures in photographs taken by Claudio Abate, Andrea Taverna and Ugo Mulas and how these images suggest imaginative ways of approaching his work. The fourth section, on the other hand, will focus on Pascali’s use of natural and industrial materials, studying their provenance, their use in the commercial sphere.

On the occasion of the Biennale Arte, Fondazione Prada’s Venetian venue, the historic palazzo of Ca’ Corner della Regina, will host the Monte di Pietà project conceived by artist Christoph Büchel (Switzerland, 1966) from April 20 to November 24, 2024. Originally the home of Venetian merchants Corner di San Cassiano, Ca’ Corner della Regina is built between 1724 and 1728 on the ruins of the Gothic building in which Caterina Cornaro, the future Queen of Cyprus, was born in 1454. In 1800 the palace became the property of Pope Pius VII, who assigned it in 1817 to the congregation of the Cavanis Fathers. Until 1969 it was the headquarters of the Monte di Pietà of Venice, while from 1975 to 2010 it housed the Historical Archives of the Venice Biennale and from 2011 it became a cultural institution. This layered history is Büchel’s starting point for building a complex network of spatial, economic and cultural relationships. The study of the concept of debt as the basis of society and an instrument of power will be developed into a complex installation. The project will include historical and contemporary works, new installation interventions and a wide selection of objects and documents related to the history of property, credit and finance, the formation of collections and archives, and the creation and meaning of real or fictitious wealth. Also presented will be Christoph Büchel’s The Diamond Maker (2020-), a suitcase containing artificial diamonds created in a laboratory, the result of the process of transforming the entire body of work in his possession, including works from his childhood and youth, and those of future creation.

As part of the Human Brains scientific project, Fondazione Prada will organize on October 17 and 18, 2024, the second edition of an international conference accompanied by an exhibition and focused on the importance of prevention and early intervention in neurodegenerative diseases. It will involve fifteen prestigious international research institutes, patient associations, and organizations working in the field of brain health. The main objectives are to have a productive discussion and dialogue among the different actors to give rise to the promotion of specific actions in the area of modifiable factors of neurodegenerative diseases, first and foremost the environment, leading to a call to action that can involve a broad community. The results of the first four phases of Human Brains-the online conference Culture and Consciousness (2020), the streaming discussion series Conversations (2021-2022), the exhibition project in Venice It Begins with an Idea (2022), and the forum and exhibition Preserving the Brain (2022) in Milan-are collected in the publication published by Fondazione Prada and available from February 2024.

From October 31, 2024 to February 24, 2025, a new commission by artist Meriem Bennani (Morocco, 1988) will be presented at the Fondazione Prada headquarters in Milan. The project will consist of a large-scale installation and a never-before-seen animated film, exploring the range of sociopolitical and cultural changes that impact emotional life, combining the collective and personal dimensions. On the one hand, the large mechanical installation will animate hundreds of second-hand objects in a chaotic ballet, and on the other hand, the feature film directed with Orian Barki and creatively produced by John Michael Boling and Jason Coombs will be set in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals and suspended between realism, autobiography and fiction.

Cinema Godard ’s activities will also be strengthened during 2024 with the intention of exploring creative visions and unexpected readings of the cinematic landscape of the present and the past, stimulating commingling with the languages of visual arts and music. The programming, curated by Paolo Moretti, will further expand its reach among different genres and territories through a rich calendar of screenings and meetings open to the public with Italian and international directors, actors and critics.

In the educational sphere, the free activities of the Children’s Academy will resume with thematic weekend workshops. Running from Feb. 3 to April 7, 2024, the new Dreams cycle is designed by artist and photographer Ilaria Turba. Until next June, the Academy also extends its activities to primary and preschools. Every Wednesday, classes in the city area will participate free of charge in workshops conceived by different teachers from time to time, including architects, pedagogues, artists, scientists, filmmakers and musicians.

Finally, the winner of the seventh edition of the Degree Award will be announced in June. Established by the Foundation in 2018, this annual initiative is a recognition of the passion and commitment of female students who have discussed a dissertation related to cultural issues at Milan’s universities: the University of Milan, Milan Polytechnic, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Bocconi University, Milan’s Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM and Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele.

Pictured is the Milan headquarters of Fondazione Prada. Photo by Bas Princen. Courtesy Fondazione Prada

Fondazione Prada, 2024 exhibitions include an extensive retrospective on Pino Pascali in Milan

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