Great masters and new exhibitions: Bergamo, Carrara Foundation unveils program for 2025-2026.

TheCarrara Academy of Bergamo announces Mondo Carrara, a program of artistic initiatives focusing on exhibition and publishing projects centered on its extraordinary collection. Between well-known works and lesser-known chapters in art history, the museum aims to offer the public new perspectives and insights into some of the most fascinating themes related to its long tradition. This year’s program, which will run throughout 2025 and part of 2026, aims to bring out previously unseen aspects of the works housed in the museum, creating a dialogue between past and present, painting and photography, conservation and scientific research.

One of the leading themes will be the operation to enhance the works of Lorenzo Lotto (Venice, 1480 - Loreto, 1556/1557), a Renaissance master who indelibly marked the history of art. The exhibition Inside Lorenzo Lotto - From the San Bernardino Altarpiece to the Photographs of Axel Hütte, which will run from April 11 to August 31, 2025, is curated by Maria Luisa Pacelli and Filippo Maggia. In the 500th year since Lorenzo Lotto’s departure from Bergamo, after 12 years of intense activity, the Carrara Academy celebrates the artist by exceptionally hosting the San Bernardino Altarpiece, a masterpiece from the church of the same name located just 500 meters from the museum, which is currently closed to the public. This is an itinerary that, in addition to celebrating the painter, will include an original photographic intervention by Axel Hütte, who will appropriate Lotto’s painting to tell its story through the contemporary language of photography.

Next, the museum will open the exhibition Art and Nature - Painting on Stone between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, which will run from October 10, 2025 to January 6, 2026, curated by Patrizia Cavazzini. The project focuses on a specific but fundamental theme of the Lombard artistic tradition, namely the use of stone as a support for painting. An aspect that is often overlooked, but which represents an important key to understanding the history of painting techniques over the centuries. There will be works by artists such as Paolo Veronese, Jacopo Bassano, Palma il Giovane, Antonio Tempesta, Salvator Rosa and Alessandro Turchi known as l’Orbetto, with loans from national and international institutions, such as Galleria Borghese, Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Palazzo Barberini as well as Museo del Prado in Madrid, Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, and from private collections.

There will also be no shortage of projects related to popular culture and curiosities spanning the history of art. Prominent among them is the exhibition Tarot - Origins, Cards, Fortune, which from Feb. 27 to June 2, 2026, under the curatorship of Paolo Plebani, will explore the history of tarot, a symbolic tradition that has had an enormous impact on the visual, literary, and philosophical culture of the West. The exhibition will recount the origins of the cards, their fortunes over the centuries and their impact on the arts, through an itinerary full of visual and narrative suggestions. Finally, the museum is preparing to celebrate the figure of Giacomo Carrara, the founder of the House of Collecting, who in 1796 gave birth to what is now one of Italy’s most prestigious museum institutions. The Giacomo Carrara - Connoisseur, Collector, Patron exhibition, scheduled for fall 2026 and spring 2027, will be curated by Maria Luisa Pacelli, Paolo Plebani and Giulia Zaccariotto and will focus on the figure of Carrara as a collector, patron and connoisseur, whose commitment enabled the birth of a museum that has been guarding the best of art for centuries.

These initiatives complement the museum’s daily activities, which include conservation, restoration and research work, with a particular focus on the protection and enhancement of artistic heritage. In fact, the Carrara Museum also stands out for its commitment to the conservation of works, which is carried out using scientific and innovative methods to ensure their preservation and enjoyment for future generations. In addition to exhibitions, MONDO CARRARA also includes special projects in the PwC Gardens, a green space that is preparing to experience its first spring and summer season in 2025. A place that will become a landmark for the public, offering outdoor activities, events and cultural gatherings.

Publications and Restorations

A catalog devoted to the sculpture collection donated by Federico Zeri is scheduled for publication in 2025. The volume represents the last act of a long and deep friendship between the art historian and the Accademia Carrara. Zeri’s decision, already mature in the late 1980s but formalized only in his will, was to donate his collection of 46 sculptures to the Bergamo museum. The bequest became effective after the art historian’s death in 1998.

Also planned is the publication of the proceedings of the conference The Skin of Sculpture, which was held at the museum in November 2024, and the publishing project Masterpieces | Masterpieces, focusing on the main works in the collection. Finally, in 2026, work will begin on the publication of the scholarly catalog of sixteenth-century works.

In the two-year period 2025-2026, restoration activities on the works housed at the Carrara will continue, stimulated by new scientific cataloguing, loans for exhibitions, the results of new studies and discoveries, and periodic checks on the state of conservation of the holdings.

Statements

“Accademia Carrara’s programming for the next two years reflects an extraordinary plurality of intentions,” says Elena Carnevali, president of the Accademia Carrara Foundation and mayor of Bergamo, “on the one hand, it exalts the heritage of our museum, reaffirming its fundamental value within our community; on the other, it strengthens already solid ties with national and international institutions, while weaving new relationships. Ambitious and diverse projects, from the protection of local heritage such as the museum’s display of Lorenzo Lotto’s San Bernardino Altarpiece on the occasion of the restoration of the church of the same name, to the reunion of the Colleoni deck of tarot cards, thanks to the exceptional loan of The Morgan Library of New York and a Bergamasque collection, testify to the fruitful relationship between public and private of which Fondazione Accademia Carrara represents a virtuous and long-lived example. I am sure that not only our many audiences, already art lovers, but also new audiences will have the opportunity to approach and be fascinated by a calendar that is scientifically rigorous, inclusive, rich in content and capable of telling fascinating and diverse stories. Carrara is daily a place of study, research, reception, conservation and enhancement. This new program testifies to the Foundation’s ability to produce high-quality content, both for temporary exhibitions and publishing initiatives, confirming its commitment to promoting culture in innovative and engaging ways.”

“We welcome with great interest the program for the next two years put together by Carrara’s new management,” says Sergio Gandi, Assessore alla Cultura Comune di Bergamo. “Maria Luisa Pacelli confirms some firm points of her vision. First of all, the relationship with the territory and the enhancement of the museum’s heritage and, widening the view, of the whole city. Both objectives can be found in the proposed exhibitions. The one dedicated to Lotto, for example, enhances the city’s heritage, in this case of a well-known parish in the city, whose work constitutes one of the high points of the painter’s work; but it is also an expression of the relationship with the religious fabric and the Diocese. In the same vein move the exhibitions on Tarot and on Giacomo Carrara, which will uncover the educational and formative value of the Carrara Academy’s origins, highlighting works from the deposits. Finally, the commitment to propose exhibitions that are scientifically rigorous and innovative in terms of themes, at the same time articulate and variable in the choice of objects, to offer a proposal that is appealing to the non-specialist public and attractive to specialists, with national and international loans. The focus placed on the role of Educational Services takes on increasing importance: indeed, this is the area of the museum that truly unites heritage with users, that ’mediates’ between community and collections, creating bridges.”

“Getting to present a two-year program in such a short time since my inauguration, something that few Italian institutions are able to do,” adds Maria Luisa Pacelli, Director Fondazione Accademia Carrara, “was a challenge for me as much as for my colleagues, as well as an important response to the many changes that affected the museum before my arrival. It was a real marathon that, from now on, will allow us to work synergistically on a multiplicity of objectives, able to embrace as a whole the different needs related to the ”Carrara World“ always starting from the conservation and enhancement of our heritage.”

“The whole Carrara team,” says Gianpietro Bonaldi, General Manager Fondazione Accademia Carrara, “has worked intensively to arrive at presenting this two-year program that shows, in a clear way, the intentions of the institution: the centrality of heritage, the strong relationship with the territory and the international outlook that characterizes its every thought. An ambitious, demanding and challenging future awaits us, which will also be successful to the extent that Fondazione Accademia Carrara will be able to involve, once again, the different publics, associations, businesses and institutions to the most active participation.”

Great masters and new exhibitions: Bergamo, Carrara Foundation unveils program for 2025-2026.

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