Milan Design Week is coming: the must-see exhibitions you can’t miss

Celebrations marking the centennial of the birth of architect and designer Gianfranco Frattini kick off in Milan with an installation at Castello Sforzesco, hosted at the Museum of Furniture and Wooden Sculptures from March 31 to June 28, 2026. The installation is integrated into the existing museum layout without altering it, using the niches as exhibition spaces: here, reissues of furniture designed by Gianfranco Frattini are displayed, created specifically for the centennial in collaboration with the companies that have shared the architect’s design journey—Artemide, Cassina, Gubi, Poltrona Frau, Tacchini, and Torri Lana. The exhibition design by Emanuela Frattini Magnusson and Pietro Todeschini creates a minimalist space defined by lacquered surfaces and a brick-red hue that highlights the objects.

Eleven ceramic micro-architectures make up Small Ritual Landscapes, a solo exhibition by Aldo Cibic at the Antonia Jannone Gallery, from April 15 to 26, 2026. The project originated in Jingdezhen, where Cibic reworks traditional techniques: assembled slabs and paste-colored clay, without glaze, to create dense, opaque surfaces. The result is a series of small sculptures that function as modular, variable fragments of landscape. The reference is to Chinese scroll paintings, but translated into a domestic and modular practice. Also on view are several preparatory drawings and a volume published by Corraini, consolidating a coherent journey between design and narrative.

As part of Milan Art Week, Casa degli Artisti presents a two-part project dedicated to Ugo La Pietra that reflects on the value of the act of making as a space for connection between art, craftsmanship, and community. The exhibition consists of two installations: “Erbario,” a new work by the artist, and “Gli Invasati,” a collective project developed with the artists in residence. “Erbario” translates the observation of wild herbs into a series of engraved ceramic books, transforming marginal plants into a poetic archive where the manuality of gestures meets a gaze turned toward the landscape. In the outdoor spaces, “Gli Invasati” takes shape, a project curated by Casa degli Artisti, which invited the artists-in-residence to engage with a shared archetype—the terracotta vase—from which each artist intervenes with autonomous formal and poetic choices, transforming it into a recognizable work of art.

A collaborative project between N Contemporary and Zaza Ramen Sake Bar & Restaurant brings together two exhibitions through a shared exploration of thresholds, perception, and the construction of space. In the gallery spaces, the exhibition “When The Sun Sets,” curated by Erica Massaccesi, brings together artists such as Aldo Mondino, Marion Baruch, and Maria D. Rapicavoli around the theme of the horizon, understood as a shifting boundary between geographical, cultural, and emotional dimensions. Meanwhile, at Zazà Ramen, the Italian-Albanian artist Anila Rubiku presents “Hues of Delicacy,” an installation that reworks domestic elements through embroidery and glass beads, constructing vibrant surfaces traversed by light. Doors and passageways become abstract forms, poised between interior and exterior.

As part of Milan Art Week and Design Week, BiM and Specific are bringing Gianni Pettena’s installation “Paper/Northern Lights,” curated by Davide Giannella, to Milan for the first time. The work, conceived in 1971 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, consists of long strips of paper suspended from the ceiling that span the space, and visitors are invited to alter them with scissors to carve out their own path, giving rise to a temporary and interactive architecture: the space transforms into an open and modifiable structure, defined by the visitors’ actions. The work challenges the traditional conception of exhibition space and architecture, questioning the idea of fixed, immutable structures and proposing instead an open, transformable, and shared dimension.

On the occasion of Milan Design Week 2026, Nilufar presents two exhibitions at its Milan locations on Via della Spiga and Viale Vincenzo Lancetti, constructing a narrative on two complementary scales: immersive and scenographic at the Depot, more intimate and conceptual on Via della Spiga. On one hand, hospitality as a space for experimentation; on the other, the home as a symbolic and ritualistic place. At Nilufar Depot, “Nilufar Grand Hotel” reinterprets the language of hospitality through immersive environments and collectible design objects, in line with the curatorial vision of Nina Yashar, who blends contemporary and vintage elements. On Via della Spiga, “La Casa Magica,” a project curated by Valentina Ciuffi with Studio Vedèt and Space Caviar, explores the domestic space as a symbolic and ritualistic place, through objects, archetypes, and new narratives on contemporary living.

The White House as political architecture: “The White House. Domestic Propaganda,” an exhibition hosted at Dropcity, is the result of research that reinterprets the White House as a domestic space for the construction of power, where interior architecture intertwines with media, social, and cultural dynamics on a global scale. The project, curated by fifty students from the Interior Design Laboratory at the Politecnico di Milano under the guidance of Davide Fabio Colaci and Lola Ottolini, consists of multiple visual studies, with each work examining a different aspect of the home, drawing connections between domestic rituals and the major political themes of our time.
 

A packed program brings the ADI Design Museum to life during Design Week 2026, featuring exhibitions, installations, and events. The centerpiece of the program is the 29th edition of the Compasso d’Oro, the historic award founded by Gio Ponti, alongside the first Milan solo exhibition by Japanese designer Haruka Misawa and Seoul Life 2026 Milan, an exhibition dedicated to the dialogue between Korean craftsmanship and contemporary technologies. Among the installations created specifically for Design Week: a celebration of Oluce’s 80-year history, featuring an immersive installation that traces the brand’s creative and cultural heritage; and Mario Botta’s “Icosaedro” project, a wooden structure from Trentino that connects design, landscape, and community – inspired by Le Corbusier’s Cabanon – and set up in the museum’s garden.

Piscina Romano, in the Porta Venezia district, once again becomes one of Milan’s most beloved exhibition venues with 6:AM’s project “Over and Over and Over and Over.” The exhibition, curated by Edoardo Pandolfo and Francesco Palù, revolves around the theme of repetition as a design method: a process that, in glasswork, generates continuous variations. The installation is built around the work “Batch,” a series of blown glass cubes previously developed for Bottega Veneta, here reorganized as a spatial structure. Also on display are the brand’s main collections, featuring new finishes and color variations, which confirm a exploration of glass capable of moving between object and architecture.

Another swimming pool, the Piscina Cozzi, is at the core of the exhibition project curated by Sabato De Sarno for Design Week 2026, titled “Insieme,” dedicated to the contemporary value of craftsmanship and design and promoted by Vanity Fair Italia. The exhibition focuses on the hands, gestures, and skills of Italian craftsmanship, drawing attention to the processes and people that make the creation of each object possible. The historic sports facility is transformed into a narrative space where manual labor and contemporary creativity intertwine, while outside, JR’s intervention – with his "Inside Out Project" – brings the faces of the artisans involved to the façade. 

Following last year’s project, the Visteria Foundation returns to Milan Design Week with “Polish Modernism: A Struggle for Beauty,” hosted on the 16th floor of Torre Velasca from April 20 to 26, 2026. Curated by Federica Sala and Anna Maga, the exhibition weaves together historical works and contemporary productions in a thematic journey that presents Polish modernism as a language that is more than just contemporary. Furniture from the National Museum in Warsaw interacts with new installations, sparking a dialogue between memory and research.

Roberto De Pinto’s exhibition at Francesca Minini Gallery, on view through May 5, takes shape through repetition as a narrative principle. The exhibition project is divided into three acts: “Ostinato,” in which a recurring figure – the artist’s alter ego – transforms itself each time, an autonomous presence that transcends the stagnation of the self-portrait, defined by a more layered painting technique, somewhere between encaustic and oil, on dark backgrounds from which the bodies emerge with force. “Capriccio” marks a departure: from the cut-out drawings, brought to life in a recent performance, collages and combinable compositions emerge, balancing lightness and structure. Finally, in “Pas de deux,” the relationship becomes more intimate: nude, sensual figures engage in dialogue with the painter, with flowers and poetic fragments, ranging from Pablo Neruda to T. S. Eliot, traversing the works.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Vincenzo Agnetti’s birth, the Vincenzo Agnetti Archive is dedicating the exhibition “Images of Power” to the Milanese artist, offering a fresh perspective on a central theme of his work. From language to technique, from subject to desire, power runs through the artist’s entire career: from “Tesi”, a book denouncing the abuse of words, to the “Inserzioni anonime,” and on to his best-known works. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the 1970 work “Profezia”, a visionary and political piece, around which other groups of works are arranged, such as the “axioms,” the flags of the political Hamlet, and “Riserva di caccia”. An essential collection of works that reflects the coherence of a body of work capable of still questioning the present.

For Art Week 2026, Bar X – the traveling exhibition project curated by Giorgio Galotti – has chosen one of the city’s most iconic venues, Bar Basso. On this occasion, photography takes center stage, featuring the work of Giovanna Silva in a site-specific installation inspired by the venue’s spaces and daily life. On April 17 at 4:00 p.m., “Foto e Negroni (sbagliato)” is scheduled, an informal conversation with the artist that weaves together reflections on contemporary photographic language and a convivial atmosphere, in the venue that symbolizes the cocktail created by Maurizio Stocchetto.
 

With Milan’s Duomo in the background, framed by the stained-glass windows of the Sala Fontana, Diego Marcon’s video opens with a carousel of postcards that evoke a travel-inspired imagery suspended between memory and visual construction. “salut! hallo! hello!” is the title of the 2010 work that earned the Lombard artist the prize awarded by the Associazione Amici Arte Contemporanea Italiana. Established in 2003 and directed by Gemma De Angelis Testa, the ACACIA Prize has over time contributed to the formation of a significant collection for the city of Milan, donated in 2015 to the Museo del Novecento in Milan, which today comprises forty works by twenty-eight Italian artists.

Held at the Palazzo dell’Arengario, the exhibition “Bruno Munari: Seeing the Air” explores Bruno Munari’s artistic research, highlighting his ability to transcend and renew the languages of kinetic and programmed art. Organized in collaboration with the Bruno Munari Archives, Spazio Munari, and Corraini Edizioni, the exhibition project revolves around a core of works that make air perceptible as a mobile element, integrating time and movement: the centerpiece of the exhibition is, in fact, the action “Far vedere l’aria” (1969), created in Como as part of Campo Urbano and documented by photographs by Ugo Mulas.

Thaddaeus Ropac’s Milan gallery is hosting “Dialogues are mostly fried snowballs,” an exhibition that brings together Marcel Duchamp and Elaine Sturtevant in a unique comparison of two key figures in conceptual art. From Duchamp’s readymades – everyday objects elevated to works of art – to Sturtevant’s repetitions, executed from memory, the exhibition explores the transition from image to concept, and the mechanisms of construction and legitimization of the artwork. From the dialogue between the two artists’ emblematic works emerges a reflection – still relevant today – on processes of reproduction and authorship, now reinterpreted in the light of digital culture and AI.

Following the renovation of the space on the Naviglio Grande, Settantaventidue reopens on April 21, 2026, with an exhibition dedicated to the drawings and watercolors of Finn Juhl. Organized in collaboration with Designmuseum Danmark and House of Finn Juhl, the exhibition focuses on preparatory materials for major international events of the early 1950s, from MoMA to the Milan Triennale. Through a selection of drawings, the central role of this practice in Juhl’s work emerges: refined watercolors that translate the organic and sculptural qualities of his furniture into form. A body of work that reimagines the construction of the exhibition space as an integral part of the project, at a time when Scandinavian design was establishing itself on the international scene.

A collaboration as an exhibition format: “Coming Soon” brings together UNA and Castiglioni Fine Arts, consolidating the partnership in their shared Milanese space, launched in 2025 to bridge emerging research and the international scene. The project creates a dialogue between Josep Maynou and Bianca Millan, exploring the boundary between reality and fiction. Maynou’s “Movie Posters”—posters for films that were never made—emerge from collaborative processes and remain open to constant variations. In parallel, Millan constructs an installation that makes the creative process visible through workflows and daily traces. A layered narrative, where storytelling and production coincide.

Metal serves as the starting point for the work of Italian-French artist Matisse Mesnil, who explores its limits and possibilities at the intersection of craftsmanship and industrial processes. “Sutura” is the title of the exhibition running through May 9, curated by Milovan Farronato and Chiara Spagnol, which inaugurates Romero Paprocki’s Milanese space, located in the Porta Venezia neighborhood. In Mesnil’s works, techniques such as welding and grinding redefine traditional subjects and genres – landscape and still life – reducing them to essential structures built through lines and minimal variations. The works are conceived in relation to the space and the viewer’s body, with a strong focus on the installation. From this perspective, the “suture” evoked by the title becomes an image of transition and of the relationship between interior and exterior, architecture and body.

Following Oltre il Salone 2023, Repubblica del Design continues its exploration with “100 Things Not to Forget,” a project that repurposes World War II shelters and bunkers as contemporary cultural spaces. During Design Week 2026, between the shelter on Via Bodio and the Breda Bunker at Parco Nord, these sites will once again be accessible as civic infrastructure, capable of hosting exhibitions and design initiatives. The program features workshops and installations, creating a journey that unites memory with contemporary use. The number “100” was chosen as a threshold and narrative framework to guide a collective narrative reflecting on new forms of refuge, particularly in relation to environmental and social transformations.