The 15 must-see exhibitions in 2020

2020 will be a year full of exhibitions, from Raphael to Georges de La Tour, from Giacometti to Tiepolo, from the theme of women in art to the myth of Ulysses, from Baroque works to Torlonia marble.

It will start with Parma Italian Capital of Culture 2020, where the exhibition Time Machine. Seeing and Experiencing Time, set up at the Palazzo del Governatore until May 3, 2020. The exhibition aims to analyze how cinema and other media based on moving images have transformed our perception of time over the past 125 years.

From January 30 to June 2, 2020, Villa Reale in Monza will host the exhibition Japan. Land of Geisha and Samurai: this is intended to be an initiatory journey to Japan through works from two major private collections, namely the collection of Valter Guarnieri and that of Lydia Manavello.

To the theme of the role of women in the history of Italian art, from the Renaissance to the Belle Époque will be dedicated the exhibition Divina creatura. Women in Art from Titian to Boldini, scheduled in Brescia at Palazzo Martinengo from January 18 to June 7, 2020. Eight thematic sections will welcome masterpieces by Guercino, Andrea Appiani, Francesco Hayez, Giuseppe De Nittis, Federico Zandomeneghi and Giovanni Boldini.

In February, the San Domenico Museums in Forlì will host the exhibition Ulysses. Art and Myth; open to the public from Feb. 15 to June 21, 2020, it will be entirely dedicated to the myth of Ulysses, which has fascinated us for three thousand years, and its various declinations.

On the other hand, a major event will be proposed by the Palazzo Reale in Milan: for the first time in Italy, it will be possible to visit, from February 7 to June 7, 2020, a major exhibition dedicated to the most famous French painter of the seventeenth century, Georges de La Tour, and his relations with the great masters contemporary with him. His masterpieces, from as many as 26 lenders, will be compared with works by Gerrit van Honthorst, Paulus Bor, Trophime Bigot, and Hendrick ter Brugghen, in order to reflect on painting from nature and luministic experiments.

The Barberini Corsini National Galleries have already announced their rich exhibition program for the whole year: from Rembrandt to Holbein, from Orazio Borgianni to Mattia Preti, ending with a review dedicated to the centrality of the viewer in images that include the latter in their aesthetic, narrative and symbolic dynamics.

The highlight of the 2020 exhibitions, however, promises to be in March, when the first major exhibition of the Torlonia Marbles Collection in Rome will be inaugurated (March 25, 2020 to January 10, 2021), when the public will be able to admire ninety-six marbles from the collection. The new Roma Capitale exhibition venue of the Capitoline Museums in Palazzo Caffarelli will also be inaugurated.

And in Rome, at the Scuderie del Quirinale, a maxi-exhibition dedicated to Raphael Sanzio will be held from March 5 to June 2, 2020, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Urbino artist’s death. More than two hundred masterpieces including paintings, drawings and comparative works will be on display here, with about a hundred works created by Raphael.

Also planned for March is a major exhibition entitled Orazio Gentileschi. The Flight into Egypt and Other Stories, which will be held at the Ala Punzone Picture Gallery in Cremona. The star will be the Rest during the Flight into Egypt, a masterpiece by Orazio Gentileschi from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the exhibition will mark the work’s first return to Italy.

Moving to Chiasso, Switzerland, the entire graphic corpus of Alberto Giacometti, which includes more than 400 sheets including woodcuts, burin engravings, etchings, punteseches and artist’s books, will be on view from March 8 to September 13, 2020. The aim will be to document Giacometti’s extraordinary mastery of various graphic techniques.

Bologna, on the other hand, will welcome the Griffoni Polyptych by Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de’ Roberti at Palazzo Fava from March 12 to June 28, 2020: for the first time, one of the greatest masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance will be seen reunited in all its parts again after three hundred years since its disintegration.

From March 13 to June 14, 2020, it will be the turn of the Reggia di Venaria, which will host, at the Citroniera of the Scuderie Juvarriane, the exhibition Sfida al Barocco. Rome Turin Paris 1680 - 1750. More than two hundred masterpieces will testify to the challenge to the Baroque launched by artists with modernity and experimentation with new forms and new languages, which took place between 1680 and 1750 especially in Rome, Turin and Paris.

The Uffizi Galleries will instead offer the first monographic exhibition dedicated to Giuseppe Bezzuoli, one of the greatest protagonists of nineteenth-century painting. Giuseppe Bezzuoli (1789-1855). A Great Protagonist of Romantic Painting will be on view from April 2 to July 31, 2020 in the Aula Magliabechiana and Sala Detti of the Uffizi.

Also planned for 2020 in Carrara is the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the great 18th-century artist Giovanni Antonio Cybei, among the greatest European sculptors of the 18th century. For the first time, many of Cybei’s masterpieces will be exhibited alongside significant works by contemporary artists, and it will be the culmination of celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara, which Cybei directed between 1769 and 1784.

Finally, a major exhibition dedicated to Giambattista Tiepolo has been anticipated to mark the 250th anniversary of his death. The exhibition will be held at the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan’s Piazza Scala from October 29, 2020 to March 21, 2021.

The 15 must-see exhibitions in 2020

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