After Design Week 2025, Milan offers a rich panorama of exhibitions that are not to be missed. Museums and exhibition spaces are open to provide an immersive journey through art and history.
Modem selected some exhibitions to see.
Typologien: photography in 20th Century Germany
Fondazione Prada - Largo Isarco
2, April 03 – June 14, 2025
Heinrich Riebesehl, Menschen Im Fahrstuhl, 20.11.1969 [People in the Elevator, 20.11.1969] 1969, Kicken Berlin. © Heinrich Riebesehl, by Siae 2025
“Typologien” is an extensive study dedicated to 20th-century German photography. The exhibition, hosted within Podium, the central building of the Milan headquarters, is curated by Susanne Pfeffer, art historian and director of the Museum Mmk Für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. The project attempts to apply the principle of “typology,” which originated in 17th- and 18th-century botany to categorize and study plants, and appeared in photography in the early 1900s, affirming itself in Germany throughout the 20th century. Paradoxically, the given formal principle allows for unexpected convergences of German artists spanning different generations and the manifestation of their individual approaches. The exhibition path will follow a typological rather than a chronological order, bringing together more than 600 photographic works by 25 established and lesser-known artists essential for recounting a century of German photography, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sibylle Bergemann, Karl Blossfeldt, Ursula Böhmer, Christian Borchert, Margit Emmrich, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Isa Genzken, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Lotte Jacobi, Jochen Lempert, Simone Nieweg, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Heinrich Riebesehl, Thomas Ruff, August Sander, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Umbo (Otto Umbehr), and Marianne Wex. A system of suspended walls will create geometric partitions in the exhibition space, forming unexpected connections between artistic practices that differ from each other, but are united by a common principle or intention of classification.
From Cindy Sherman To Francesco Vezzoli
Palazzo Reale - Piazza del Duomo 12,
March 07 – May 04, 2025
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #555, 2010/2012. Color chromogenic print, 86x59 cm Edition 9/10+2 AP © Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the Artist and Hauser & Wirth
From Cindy Sherman to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, from Nan Goldin to Nicole Eisenman, from Kiki Smith to Marc Quinn, from Lisetta Carmi to Francesco Vezzoli; all artists featured in the unprecedented and prestigious contemporary section of the Giuseppe Iannaccone Collection who will be linked and connected by a dialogue on the most important social issues such as the relationship with the body, the ever-changing identity, multiculturalism and the complex interactions between East and West. It is an experience that crosses temporal and spatial boundaries, proposing a dialogue between visions that are geographically distant but converging on sensitive and inescapable contemporary issues. Curated by Daniele Fenaroli, with the scientific support of Vincenzo De Bellis.
YUKINORY YANAGI: ''Icarus''
Pirelli Hangar Bicocca - via Chiese 2
March 27 – July 27, 2025
Yukinori Yanagi, Icarus. Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milano, 2025. ©Yanagi Studio Courtesy. Photo Agostino Osio
Pirelli HangarBicocca presents “Icarus”, the first major anthological exhibition in Europe dedicated to the art of Yukinori Yanagi with a wide selection of key works from the 1990s and 2000s, as well as more recent works. Yanagi recontextualizes some of his most significant and monumental installations, offering insights that are more relevant than ever on issues of nationalism, governance mechanisms, and the paradoxical aspects of contemporary societies.
“Icarus” the title of Yukinori Yanagi’s exhibition, evokes the Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus, which serves as a cautionary message as well as an invitation to reflect upon human arrogance born from overconfidence in technology. By getting too close to the sun (which the artist understands as a metaphor for nuclear energy), Icarus becomes responsible for his downfall.
The exhibition narrative presents visitors with a constant duality, establishing a dialogue between past and present, destruction and rebirth, reality and fantasy, matter and symbolism, movement and permanence. The idea of transcending physical boundaries, represented by elements such as containers, barrels, and other objects used in transportation systems, becomes a metaphor for global interconnectedness.
VALERIO ADAMI: Laboratorio
Gió Marconi, via Tadino 15.
March 28 – July 11, 2025
Valerio Adami, Privacy. Homosexuals, 1966. Acrylic on canvas. Private collection, Courtesy Gió Marconi, Milan Photo Paolo Vandrasch
Fondazione Marconi and Gió Marconi present the exhibition Valerio Adami. Laboratorio, an important tribute to the artist, in collaboration with the Archivio Valerio Adami, sixty years after his first show at Studio Marconi in Milan and ninety years after his birth. Valerio Adami, one of the most significant post-war Italian artists and a central figure of Narrative Figuration, is known for his vibrantly coloured paintings and his ability in portraying modern society in a unique visual language. Combining flat shapes, saturated colours and sharp outlines since the 1960s he has incorporated elements of everyday life into the narrative structure of his paintings, creating new and unexpected relationships among them and offering a critical and innovative view of reality. The exhibition aims to investigate a crucial period in Valerio Adami’s production, from 1962 to the early 1970s, through a thematic itinerary closely intertwined with the journeys and places the artist visited in those years. Following a chronological order, the exhibition intends to highlight the influence that the atmospheres of those places had on his work and creative process.
CASORATI
Palazzo Reale - Piazza del Duomo 12.
February 15 – June 29, 2025
Meriggio, 1923, oil on panel, 119 x 130 cm. Trieste, Civic Museum Revoltella, Gallery of Modern Art. Photo Credit: Gallery of Modern Art, Trieste. © Felice Casorati by Siae
Dedicated to one of the most influential and recognized figures among 20th-century Italian artists, the Felice Casorati exhibition is an anthology that comprehensively reconstructs the artist's entire career, tracing the various phases of his painting. Designed for the halls of Palazzo Reale, the exhibition presents a collection of one hundred significant works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and graphic works, sourced from prestigious private collections as well as museum institutions. Notably, it features pieces from the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, which houses the largest group of the artist's works. Throughout his long career, Casorati consistently attributed a strategic function to Milan, recognized as the first city in Italy to establish a modern art system and market. The exhibition further emphasizes the artist's multifaceted vocation and contributions that extend beyond painting, from sculpture to graphic art, in which, due to his continuous experimentation, he achieved equally high and original results. Not to mention his involvement in drawing, illustration, and a profound passion for music, which led him to a remarkable activity as a set and costume designer for operas. Curated by Giorgina Bertolino, Fernando Mazzocca and Francesco Poli.
SHIRIN NESHAT: Bondy of Evidence
PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea - via Palestro 14,
March 28 – July 08, 2025
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Shirin Neshat, Rapture, 1999. Silver print. Copyright Shirin Neshat. Courtesy the artist.
PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea presents the major solo exhibition of Iranian artist Shirin Neshat (1957, Qazvin), winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Art Biennale in 1999, the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2009, and the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo in 2017. The exhibition spans the artist’s more than 30-year career, with almost 200 photographs and ten video installations, collected by the world’s most important museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, the Guggenheim, New York, and Tate Modern. A multidisciplinary artist, Neshat works with photography, video, film, and theatre, creating highly lyrical narratives and politically loaded visions that question the themes of power, religion, race, and the relationship between past and present, east and west, individual and collective. Curated by Diego Sileo and Beatrice Benedetti.
NICO VASCELLARI: Pastorale
Palazzo Reale - Piazza del Duomo 12,
April 01 – June 02, 2025
Nico Vascellari, Pastorale, 2025. Mixed media on xerox. Courtesy Studio Nico Vascellari
In a great new solo show titled Pastorale, artist Nico Vascellari presents recent and new works in various spaces of Palazzo Reale in Milan, including the majestic Sala delle Cariatidi, from April 1st to June 2nd, 2025. Through an anthropological gaze, Vascellari (b. 1976, Vittorio Veneto) explores the connection between man and nature, intertwining personal and collective dimensions through works spanning performance, installation, sculpture, video, and sound., The project draws inspiration from the history of the Sala particularly the events of the 20th century that led to its near-total destruction during the 1943 bombing of Milan, and the subsequent monumental 1953 exhibition of Guernica by Pablo Picasso. Pastorale is also set to expand to other locations throughout the city and will feature performance, sculpture, installation, and sound works. Curated by Sergio Risaliti.
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