All must-see exhibitions in Milan this spring

With “M for Dictionary,” Fondazione Marconi and Gió Marconi pay tribute to Man Ray with a major retrospective on the fiftieth anniversary of his death. Curated by Yuval Etgar and Deborah D'Ippolito, the exhibition explores the artist's entire oeuvre—photography, drawing, objects, and paintings—focusing on the famous artist's linguistic thinking as the key to understanding his work. Like a true visual dictionary, the exhibition explores the relationships between words, images, and objects through five thematic sections, also referring to the “Alphabet for Adults” cycle . Ironic and experimental, Man Ray transforms art into a linguistic game capable of blending conceptual and visual dimensions. A second display features works by contemporary artists from the gallery—Alex Da Corte, Simon Fujiwara, Wade Guyton, Allison Katz, and Tai Shani—who engage with this legacy, highlighting the relevance of Man Ray's approach today.

Istituto Svizzero in Milan presents Romane de Watteville’s first solo exhibition in Italy, “I’ll miss you when I scroll away,” a project conceived specifically for the institution’s spaces. The exhibition takes the form of an environmental installation consisting of a series of modular screens painted on both sides, which divide the space into an almost labyrinthine path. The artist's figurative painting combines references to art history, cinema, fashion, and contemporary visual culture, generating images that reflect the perceptual fragmentation characteristic of the digital environment. Between scenes evoking the end of a party and accumulations of objects, Romane de Watteville's compositions refer to a dimension suspended between opulence and entropy, questioning the speed with which images, memories, and emotions are consumed and forgotten in contemporary visual culture.

With “Io ti saluto, luce, ma con nervi offesi”, Pietro Roccasalva presents his first solo exhibition in the Milanese spaces of the MASSIMODECARLO gallery. The project brings together new paintings alongside recurring subjects from his iconographic universe: imaginary landscapes, paradoxical still lifes, and a series of enigmatic figures—a child with unkempt hair, a girl with a doll, a bride with an unusual racket, a mother with a cornucopia. The works reflect on painting's ability to relate individual time to the long duration of images. Roccasalva's compositions bring together references to mythology, literature, and popular culture – such as Pierino Porcospino, a character born from the mind of Heinrich Hoffmann– transformed by autobiographical elements and fragments of everyday life. At the heart of the visual narrative lies the elusive theme of time, which in Roccasalva's imagination does not flow in a linear fashion but precipitates, like the hot air balloon that recurs in his paintings. In this gravitational aesthetic, individual experience and autobiography become vehicles through which images and traditions continue to be transmitted over time.

“The Second Shadow. Dozie Kanu Mirroring Marc Camille Chaimowicz, with Shared Echoes and Kindred Spirits” brings together two environmental installations conceived as rooms: "Jean Cocteau" (2003–2014) by Marc Camille Chaimowicz and a new site-specific work by Dozie Kanu. The project reflects on the themes of the double, heritage, and the transmission of forms, activating a genealogy that crosses the figure of Jean Cocteau and the two artists. More than a philological reconstruction, the exhibition is configured as a place of exchange: two autonomous environments that dialogue at a distance, transforming themselves into reflective surfaces. Alongside Chaimowicz's historic installation, Kanu's intervention introduces a field of relationships and presences that expands the original work, while a screening of “The Testament of Orpheus” (1960) completes the project.

Fondazione Prada presents "Dash", the new multimedia project by Chinese artist Cao Fei, combining photography, video installation, virtual reality, documentary, and archival materials. The exhibition, staged in the Podium space, is the result of research conducted in recent years in the countryside of southern and northwestern China and Southeast Asia, investigating the development of so-called smart agriculture. Through this work, Cao Fei explores the transformations of the global agricultural sector, marked by climate change, water scarcity, and the depopulation of rural areas. The project reflects on how algorithms and digital technologies are redefining the relationship between work, territory, and food production, creating tension between traditional knowledge and automated systems and raising questions about the social, ecological, and cultural implications of the technological revolution.

“Social Unrest”, curated by Niccolò Gravina with historiographical research by Zoé Samudzi, investigates contemporary uprisings by relating them to a constellation of historical precedents in order to reflect on the structural causes of social conflicts. The exhibition brings together new works by international artists such as Tony Cokes, Satoshi Fujiwara, and Sung Tieu, along with recent works by Alessandro Di Pietro and Hannah Black. The installation, designed by Sabotage Practice, introduces a barricade-like structure that crosses the exhibition space, suggesting a fragmentary and critical reading of protest phenomena and their political implications.

The spring season at PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea opens with a monographic exhibition by artist and musician Marco Fusinato, whose practice intertwines visual arts and sound experimentation. Curated by Diego Sileo, the exhibition marks the artist's return to Italy after participating in the 2022 Art Biennale for the Australian Pavilion. The exhibition focuses on three ongoing projects that explore noise as an artistic language and physical experience. Fusinato uses electric guitars and amplification systems to generate improvised frequencies that envelop the space and the viewer's body, transforming sound into a form of temporal sculpture. The centerpiece of the exhibition is “DESASTRES,” the monumental performance-installation first presented at the Venice Biennale and developed as a continuous action in which images and sound synchronize, creating an immersive and intensely perceptive environment.

With "Smooth Operator", Danish artist Villiam Miklos Andersen presents his first solo exhibition in Italy, a project that explores contemporary economic systems through a queer perspective. Through sculpture, installation, and relational devices, Andersen observes work environments marked by masculine cultures and norms, interpreting objects as tools that shape social behaviors and dynamics of belonging. Spread over three floors, the exhibition reflects on the idea of comfort as an institutional product that defines who can access well-being and under what conditions. The spaces bring together dimensions that are usually separate – work and play, care and recovery, operational and social areas – while materials, lighting, scents, and surfaces transform standardized objects into sensory experiences. The entire exhibition is conceived as a space of passage, in which the public is invited to explore alternative forms of relationship between the body, the environment, and systems of control.

Consonni Radziszewski inaugurates its new Milan space with uYana umhlaba, the first solo exhibition in Italy by South African artist Buhlebezwe Siwani. The project brings together a new cycle of multi-material paintings that develop the research begun with the “Inkanyamba” series, exploring memory, territory, and identity through abstract, layered landscapes. Made with sewn fabrics, pigments, resin, and other symbolic materials, the works evoke the landscapes of the artist’s childhood in South Africa during apartheid. Gold, water, and soap – recurring elements in her practice – recall the history of the Soweto mines, purification rituals, and tensions between African spirituality and Christian tradition. The result is complex surfaces in which personal history, collective memory, and reflections on colonialism intertwine in abstract and intense forms.

The exhibition “Depero Space to Space” at Museo Bagatti Valsecchi stages an unprecedented dialogue between the collecting vision of brothers Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi and the research of Fortunato Depero. The project explores their shared desire to inhabit spaces suspended between the ancient and the contemporary, transforming the rooms of the house museum into a narrative in which eras, languages, and visions overlap. Depero's works, integrated into the Neo-Renaissance setting created by the two Milanese barons, do not impose themselves as foreign presences but blend into the space, replacing or complementing historical objects and furnishings. The result is an immersive journey in which memory and design coexist, suggesting an ideal continuity between the Futurist art house in Rovereto and the Milanese house-museum.

Museo di Santa Giulia is hosting “A Closer Look,” the first major Italian monographic exhibition on Bruce Gilden, one of the pioneers of street photography and a member of Magnum Photos. Curated by Denis Curti and included in the Brescia Photo Festival program, the exhibition presents about eighty photographs that trace the author's research through frontal portraits, urban reportages, and early images. The focus of the exhibition is the series “Faces” (2013–2024), in which the direct use of flash renders an intense and unmediated vision of the faces encountered in contemporary metropolises. Alongside these recent works, black-and-white photographs taken in New York, Haiti, Japan, and Europe testify to the evolution of a gaze that combines close confrontation and strong narrative tension. The project is completed by the site-specific installation “Grace / Grazia” at the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, expanding the dialogue between photography and artistic tradition.

From March 20, 2026, Platea | Palazzo Galeano presents “Fivefold Tuning,” a curatorial project by Giovanna Manzotti that transforms the exhibition program into a unified journey built on layers and relationships between works. Conceived as a five-voice “tuning” process, the project kicks off on March 20, 2026, with an intervention by Liliana Moro, who sets the rhythm and atmosphere for the works of emerging artists Federica Balconi, Lorena Bucur, Diana Lola Posani, and Andrea Di Lorenzo. The showcase is transformed into a dynamic space of resonance, capable of reflecting the transience of the city and activating a continuous dialogue between different languages and sensibilities. The works coexist and change over time, constructing an evolving exhibition narrative in which proximity, listening, and shared tension define the audience's experience.