A new direction for Miart: 7 things to see at Milan Art Week 2026

From April 17 to 19, in the days leading up to Salone del Mobile, Milan once again revolves around miart—the international fair for modern and contemporary art organized by Fiera Milano. In 2026, the fair celebrates its 30th edition under the title “New Directions: miart, but different,” a nod to John Coltrane’s iconic 1963 jazz album. Almost as a statement of intent, this year’s fair introduces a number of changes, starting with its venue, moving from Fieramilanocity to the South Wing of Allianz MiCo’s new exhibition complex. But the reasons behind this title go deeper. As Nicola Ricciardi, now in his sixth (and final) edition as director, explains to Domus: “We felt it was a powerful image to reflect on the role of art fairs today. At a time marked by profound transformations—political, technological, economic, but also perceptual—I believe a fair can no longer simply function as a marketplace. It must instead ask how to create more sensitive, more porous contexts.”

This vision has shaped Ricciardi’s tenure, which has seen a gradual transformation of the fair: greater international reach, new curatorial sections, and closer dialogue with institutions. With 160 galleries from 24 countries and over a century of art history under one roof, miart remains one of the broadest platforms in terms of chronological scope—bringing early 20th-century masterpieces into conversation with contemporary research. As Ricciardi puts it: “A fair really works when it sparks curiosity, attention, and the desire to go deeper. That only happens when artworks, galleries, and projects are framed within something more than a purely transactional setting.”

This approach is reflected in the fair’s structure, divided into three sections—Emergent, Established, and Established Anthology—which not only organize the exhibition across distinct spatial levels, but also create a dialogue between different eras, languages, and artistic lineages. From experimental practices to historical reinterpretations, the fair reaffirms its distinctive identity: embracing a wide artistic and temporal spectrum. For those interested in emerging international trends, a highlight is the section curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, dedicated to experimental voices on the global stage. Featuring 29 galleries from cities such as Los Angeles, Istanbul, Warsaw, New York, Johannesburg, and London, it offers a snapshot of cutting-edge practices. Among Italian participants, the young and dynamic Cremona-based gallery Triangolo stands out, presenting an intimate, immersive environment featuring sculptures by Nicole Colombo.

“People often think of a fair as a neutral container, but it never is,” Ricciardi continues. “Every spatial decision produces a curatorial vision, a rhythm, a way of engaging attention. Here too, the reference to New Directions returns: architecture is not a passive frame, but something that shapes how we perceive and listen.” If in 2025 miart adopted “friendship” as its guiding paradigm, the shift to New Directions in 2026 signals a more structural change: less about new content, and more about reconfiguring the very conditions through which the fair generates meaning. 

Nicola Ricciardi, director of miart

It comes as no surprise, then, that this edition further strengthens collaborations with institutions and partners, consolidating a model developed over recent years. Awards, acquisition funds, and special projects—including the Massimo Giorgetti Prize, the Orbital Cultura – Nexi Group Prize (the only award entirely dedicated to photography), and the Matteo Visconti di Modrone Prize—highlight a commitment to supporting forms of production and research that go beyond the traditional fair format. Alongside these, the new Movements initiative, developed in collaboration with the St. Moritz Art Film Festival, explores the relationship between cinema and art through a program of twenty video works.

As usual, Milan Art Week—now in its tenth edition—extends far beyond miart, offering around 400 events, including exhibitions, performances, talks, and special openings. As the fair closes, the baton passes to Design Week, marked this year by the opening of “Andrea Branzi By Toyo Ito – Continuous Present” at Triennale Milano. Below is a selection of seven must-see events.

Following his presentation at the Australian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, where his project DESASTRES earned a Special Jury Mention, the PAC hosts the first European monographic exhibition dedicated to Marco Fusinato—an Australian noise artist and musician among the most radical figures on the international scene. Working across installation, photography, sound recording, and performance, Fusinato explores noise as both material and physical force, often through the visceral impact of amplified electric guitar. Bringing together key works, the exhibition focuses on three ongoing projects centered on noise. Blending sound, image, and action, it creates an immersive environment where artistic and musical languages overlap, pushing toward the most immaterial frontiers of contemporary visual culture. Intense, hallucinatory, and fully immersive, on view through June 7.

Fifty years after his death, this exhibition at Gió Marconi and Fondazione Gió Marconi revisits one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, focusing on a lesser-explored aspect of his work: language. Beyond his identity as a photographer and surrealist, Man Ray emerges here as a “visual writer,” working across photography, objects, drawing, and painting through wordplay, semantic shifts, and conceptual strategies. These playful disruptions between sign, object, and meaning have defined his work since its earliest stages—even reflected in his name change from Emmanuel Radnitzky to Man Ray. The exhibition also revisits Alphabet for Adults, first shown at Studio Marconi in 1969, and places Ray in dialogue with contemporary artists such as Alex Da Corte, Simon Fujiwara, and Allison Katz—highlighting his enduring influence on practices that operate between image and text. On view from April 11 to July 24.

BiM and the collective Specific present “Paper/Northern Lights” by Gianni Pettena, a leading figure in Italian Radical Architecture whose work has long pushed architecture toward performance and action. Curated by Davide Giannella, the installation is an ephemeral, participatory structure: paper, cut by visitors with scissors, becomes an unstable material that continuously reshapes the space. The result is a collective process that redefines both form and meaning. In line with Pettena’s research since the 1970s—from “unconscious architectures” to environmental works like Ice House—the project privileges gesture and time over construction. As in his earlier “Paper/Midwestern Ocean”, first realized in 1971 and later in 2009 for the Vienna Secession, the work reimagines art as event and space as an ongoing rewriting, dissolving boundaries between art, architecture, and viewer. On view from April 14 to June 20 (performance on April 18).

Fondazione ICA’s project room hosts Life Cycles, the first public presentation of 52 Ludlow by Giovanni Ghidini—a long-term project developed over more than twenty-five years, curated by Alberto Salvadori. Based in New York since the mid-1990s, after a career in fashion photography and experimental cinema, Ghidini transformed the rooftop of his Lower East Side studio into a site of cultivation and observation. The sunflowers he grows become the subjects of a practice that merges horticulture, sculpture, and photography. As the plants evolve into sculptural forms, they are captured using historical photographic techniques that give material presence to the image. Through a ritual of care and transformation, the flowers take on an almost anthropomorphic quality. The exhibition runs alongside The Second Shadow and the eighth edition of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Sculpture Prize.

Paris Internationale arrives in Milan for the first time, marking its first expansion beyond France since its founding in Paris in 2015. Hosted at Palazzo Galbani—a modernist building designed by Eugenio and Ermenegildo Soncini with structural engineering by Pier Luigi Nervi—the event runs from April 18 to 21. Conceived by a group of gallerists, Paris Internationale offers an alternative fair model: more focused, more curated, and attentive to the needs of artists and professionals. The Milan edition combines a rich public program with an international selection of galleries, including Italian participants such as Visamare, Minini, Noero, and Lia Rumma.

On view from April 9 to 19 at Museo del Novecento, salut! hallo! hello! (2010) by Diego Marcon is the winner of the ACACIA Prize. Presented in dialogue with Sala Fontana overlooking Piazza Duomo, the work revisits a key moment in Marcon’s exploration of moving images, marking his transition from documentary toward increasing abstraction—before later embracing more explicitly fictional narratives. Through a sequence of postcards and tourist images, the work creates a short circuit between memory, reproduction, and experience, questioning the moment when reality becomes a stereotype. Born in 1985, Marcon has exhibited at major institutions including Triennale Milano and the Venice Biennale. His practice spans cinema, installation, and storytelling, revealing the uncanny and melancholic dimensions of the familiar.

Shifting Crossroads. Beirut Contemporary highlights one of the most vibrant artistic scenes in the Middle East, positioning Beirut as a key historical and cultural crossroads of the Mediterranean—a layered city where identities and narratives intersect, and which today faces a deeply complex geopolitical reality. Hosted at CIRCOLO, the exhibition brings together artists including Simone Fattal, Mona Hatoum, Akram Zaatari, Rabih Mroué, Joana Hadjithomas, and Khalil Joreige, alongside voices from the Lebanese diaspora. Through installations, video, photography, and sculpture, the exhibition explores memory, archives, and unstable geographies, reflecting on the historical and political fractures that have reshaped the region from the Ottoman period to the present.

Opening image: Courtesy miart