Exhibitions to see in Italy in June 2026 From visionary painting to immersive photography, from feminist art to cinematic costumes
June has finally arrived. The thermometer is hitting tropical temperatures, the days are getting longer, and so is the desire to go out, see things, wander into new cities or rediscover the one we live in with slightly less tired eyes. The excuse might be a day trip, a walk with no real destination, or, much more simply, the urge to hide somewhere with air conditioning and a generous dose of beauty. Whatever the reason, this is the perfect month to visit an exhibition. Yes, but which one? Between Milan, Venice, Rome, Turin, Palermo and Reggio Emilia, the calendar of exhibitions to see in Italy in June 2026 seems designed to satisfy wildly different moods and obsessions. There’s the visionary painting of Francesco Clemente, the material and volcanic feminism of Judy Chicago, the poetic photography of Luigi Ghirri, the almost obsessive elegance of Robert Mapplethorpe, the Metaphysical worlds of de Chirico, and even a parade of costumes worn by some of cinema’s most iconic queens. These exhibitions are completely different from one another, yet united by a rare quality: they do not feel made simply to be “seen.” Rather, they are meant to be crossed through, mentally archived, and perhaps poorly recounted to friends the next day between an aperitivo and an “I can’t really explain it, but it was beautiful.” Which, after all, is often the sign of the things we truly loved.
The exhibitions to see in Italy in June 2026
Francesco Clemente - Milan
At the Triennale di Milano comes In Between, a major retrospective dedicated to Francesco Clemente, and it is one of those exhibitions that seems specifically designed to remind us that truly interesting artists never stand still, neither geographically nor mentally. The roughly seventy works on display span forty years of practice without ever giving the impression of a “summary exhibition.” Quite the opposite. Everything is in constant motion. Bodies change shape, symbols migrate from one culture to another, spirituality coexists with desire, intimacy with myth. Clemente has always worked within a suspended space, “in between,” precisely, where East and West, refined painting and visionary imagination coexist without asking permission. The exhibition unfolds like a kind of emotional atlas in which the artist continuously sheds his skin. There are oils, pastels, works on paper, books and frescoes, but above all there is that idea of permanent metamorphosis that still makes his painting feel magnetic and irregular today, like certain records impossible to categorize. Visitors will find themselves immersed in a feverish, sensual, spiritual and deliberately ambiguous imaginary world. This exhibition, the first major Italian retrospective dedicated to the artist in more than fifteen years, does not ask to be understood immediately, but rather experienced. Much like certain dreams just before waking up.
Title: Francesco Clemente: In Between
When: until September 6, 2026
Where: Triennale, Milan
Judy Chicago - Venice
Amid the magnificent chaos of the Venice Biennale 2026, Galleria Alberta Pane hosts The Materiality of Judy Chicago, a solo exhibition dedicated to Judy Chicago. The American artist is a key figure in contemporary feminist art, even if for years her name remained almost overshadowed by the monumental success of The Dinner Party. This exhibition finally broadens the perspective, presenting an extensive body of research made of porcelain, glass, embroidery, metal, textiles and experiments that have always challenged the somewhat snobbish distinction between fine art and decorative art. The exhibition spans sixty years of career with surprising lightness, even while addressing immense themes such as patriarchy, female representation and the environmental crisis. The new works from the Lilies/Goddesses series, created partly in Venice with Studio Berengo, resemble ritual objects, beautiful and restless, seemingly arrived from a future civilization: metallic flowers, luminous sculptures, sensual forms that speak of nature but also of ecological collapse. The Venetian exhibition therefore has the merit of highlighting the ecological and almost cosmic dimension of Chicago’s more recent work, a lesser-known aspect of her practice. Behind the color and spectacle emerges a severe reflection on the fragility of the planet and the need to imagine cultural models alternative to the patriarchal paradigm. Written like this, it sounds like a very intense and slightly boring university seminar; seen in person, however, The Materiality of Judy Chicago is a surprisingly sensual visual experience.
Title: The Materiality of Judy Chicago
When: until November 22, 2026
Where: Galleria Alberta Pane, Venice
Luigi Ghirri - Reggio Emilia
There are photographers who document the world and photographers who change the way we learn to look at it. Luigi Ghirri radically belongs to the second category. At Palazzo dei Musei, A Series of Dreams. Visual Landscapes and Sound Landscapes explores the relationship between image and music in his work, what Ghirri called their “mysterious kinship”, while carefully avoiding the trap of nostalgia. So here are photographs of theaters, musical instruments, jukeboxes, churches with organs resembling liturgical spaceships. But also unpublished materials linked to his relationship with musicians such as Lucio Dalla, Gianni Morandi and CCCP. The beating heart of the project, however, is probably the section developed with Iosonouncane, which works on the concept of soundscape and the relationship between acoustic and visual landscapes. The sensation is that of entering a place where one learns once again to listen to spaces, noises, even silence itself. The result is certainly a refined exhibition, but also surprisingly pop in the highest sense of the term, because it manages to bring together Bob Dylan, image philosophy, RCA record covers and the plains of Emilia without ever losing its lightness.
Title: A Series of Dreams. Visual Landscapes and Sound Landscape
When: until February 28, 2027
Where: Palazzo dei Musei, Reggio Emilia
Robert Mapplethorpe - Rome
At the Museo dell’Ara Pacis, The Forms of Beauty brings around two hundred photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe to Rome, narrating an almost obsessive search for formal perfection. Every image seems carved from marble rather than printed on film. Light becomes architectural matter, black and white acquires a classical rigidity reminiscent of ancient sculpture, while the human body loses all spontaneity to transform into absolute form. The result is unsettling and immensely powerful. This is because beneath that impeccable elegance something ambiguous, sensual and almost scandalous continues to vibrate. Not so much because of explicit content, but because of the radical nature of the gaze itself. Mapplethorpe pushes beauty to the point where it becomes almost disturbing, like a statue that appears too perfect when seen up close. In fact, while looking at certain photographs at the Ara Pacis, one almost begins to think that the New York photographer understood Roman classicism better than many Italian artists did.
Title: Robert Mapplethorpe. The Forms of Beauty
When: until October 4, 2026
Where: Museo dell’Ara Pacis, Exhibition Space, Rome
Queens on stage – Turin
At the Reggia di Venaria, Queens on Stage takes cinematic costume design, something we all think we already know, and transforms it into something far more interesting. The exhibition gathers thirty-one costumes from cinema, theater, opera and television series to tell the story of how the image of female royalty is created. Not historically accurate royalty, of course. Spectacular royalty. The kind that remains embedded in collective memory. The journey moves from Kirsten Dunst’s Marie Antoinette in Sofia Coppola’s film to the Medea portrayed by Maria Callas for Pier Paolo Pasolini, all the way to the fantasy queen played by Salma Hayek in Tale of Tales. By observing embroidery, silhouettes, wigs and jewels, visitors discover the extraordinary work of Italian ateliers, costume designers and artisans who for decades shaped the visual language of power, femininity and myth, transforming a simple dress into a total and fascinating narrative device. The beauty of the exhibition? You suddenly find yourself looking at embroidery or a crown with the same attention usually reserved for a painting.
Title: Queens on Stage
When: until September 6, 2026
Where: Reggia di Venaria Reale, Turin
Giorgio de Chirico - Vieste
Return to the Mediterranean explores the final decades of de Chirico’s production through around fifty works including oils, watercolors and drawings, following the idea of the sea as the origin of pictorial memory. In the section The Sea of Painting, horses on the beach, bathers and luminous landscapes dialogue with the great European tradition, from Titian to Rubens. It is de Chirico at his most unexpected, almost classical, deeply in love with material and color. Then comes the more enigmatic side. With The Sea of the Mind, mannequins, gladiators, suspended rooms and above all the famous Mysterious Baths reappear, where parquet floors become imaginary seas and everything seems to float in frozen time. Here the Mediterranean ceases to be geography and becomes a mental state, a place of unconsciousness and memory. The final section, dedicated to the relationship between de Chirico and Padre Pio, adds a surprisingly spiritual dimension. Hosted by the Museo Civico Archeologico Michele Petrone, the exhibition places Metaphysical art on the shores of the Mediterranean that for the artist was both real landscape and mental territory. And there is something perfectly surreal about seeing Giorgio de Chirico’s painting arrive in Vieste, amid blinding light, salty wind and tourists eating granita by the sea.
Title: Giorgio de Chirico. Return to the Mediterranean
When: until September 27, 2026
Where: Museo Civico Archeologico Michele Petrone, Vieste
Keita Miyazaki - Venice
In Venice, all it takes is a rainy day or a gondola ride to remember that water here is not merely a romantic backdrop, but the true protagonist. And it is precisely from this awareness that From Water To Form, Keita Miyazaki’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Oriental Art in Ca’ Pesaro, begins. The Japanese artist’s research revolves around water as a transformative force capable of destroying, eroding and regenerating. The exhibition genuinely succeeds in transforming this idea into a physical experience. The works seem suspended in a continuous state of metamorphosis, between liquid matter solidifying, surfaces appearing on the verge of dissolution, and forms hovering between the natural and the artificial. What makes the exhibition especially compelling is the implicit dialogue between Japanese culture and Venetian identity. Venice, a city built on water and continuous exchanges between Europe and Asia, becomes almost a natural extension of Miyazaki’s poetics. And the Museum of Oriental Art at Ca’ Pesaro, with its Edo-period Japanese collections, further amplifies this interplay of references across time and geography. It is an exhibition that demands slowness, attention and a willingness to let oneself be absorbed by the spaces. In return, however, it offers one of the most immersive experiences of the season, perfect for those searching for contemporary art exhibitions in Venice far removed from the Biennale’s amusement-park effect.
Title: Keita Miyazaki - From Water To Form
When: until September 13, 2026
Where: Museum of Oriental Art, Ca’ Pesaro, Venice
Antonio Biasiucci – Caserta
Archetypes is not simply a retrospective. It is a kind of journey into the material substance of the world. Antonio Biasiucci has always worked with extremely concrete elements, bread, milk, animals, volcanoes, folk rituals, transforming them into something universal and almost cosmic. Thus, mozzarella ceases to be mozzarella and begins to resemble a planet; bread becomes a meteorite; the volcano takes on the symbolic weight of primordial creation. Everything loses its immediate context in order to enter an archetypal dimension. The roughly three hundred photographs and installations unfold between the Palatine Chapel and the Great Gallery of the Royal Palace, using the spaces in an almost theatrical way. The ex-votos photographed by Biasiucci and displayed in the chapel resemble apparitions suspended somewhere between faith and surrealism. Installations such as Milky Body transform the exhibition path into an immersive, almost sensory experience. There is also a strong connection with the Campania region through faces, rituals, the looms of San Leucio and tools used in silk production. Yet nothing is narrated in a folkloristic way. Biasiucci strips everything down to its essence, as though searching for a shared human alphabet.
Title: Archetypes
When: until November 30, 2026
Where: Royal Palace of Caserta, Caserta
Francesco Costantino - Palermo
Within the spaces of Martha – Music ART House Academy in Palermo, Francesco Costantino constructs an intimate, melancholic exhibition filled with silent layers of meaning. His oils on paper, especially the Apples and Agaves series, seem to move between twentieth-century pictorial memory and something more elusive, almost ghostly. The central theme is inheritance, not only artistic, but emotional, familial and psychological. In the final room, Costantino’s works enter into dialogue with paintings created in the 1970s by his mother, painter Laura Natangelo, creating a beautiful short circuit between generations, languages and different times. The walls become a sort of sentimental archive where the past never truly stops speaking. The painting goes beyond stylistic exercise. It resembles a living, everyday, almost domestic presence. There are echoes of Cézanne, Sironi and Gauguin, but without any of the self-conscious quotation often associated with “intellectual painting.” Everything feels natural, deeply breathed-in. It is an exhibition that never raises its voice, yet lingers for a long time afterward. And then there is the title, Lighting Cigarettes for Ghosts, which is simply wonderful.
Title: Lighting Cigarettes for Ghosts
When: until July 11, 2026
Where: Martha – Music ART House Academy, Palermo
Claudio Costa - Turin
PAV – Parco Arte Vivente dedicates a major solo exhibition to Claudio Costa entitled Metamagico, because everything here seems to oscillate between science and ritual, anthropological museum and shamanic séance. Costa was one of the most radical and difficult-to-classify artists of postwar Italian art. Close to Arte Povera yet always marginal to it, he developed an intensely personal research practice in which bones, clay, wax, slate and organic materials become instruments for excavating the origins of humanity. The exhibition focuses particularly on the 1970s, the most powerful period of his work, transforming the spaces of the PAV into a kind of impossible museum. There are display cases, panels, photographs and installations resembling artifacts from an unknown civilization or from a very ancient future. Costa uses nature as both biological and cultural archive, convinced that the past continues to live within matter itself. The concept of “work in regress,” invented by the artist as an ironic response to “work in progress,” perfectly describes this approach of moving forward by going backward, toward what existed before modern civilization and its rational obsessions. What is surprising is how contemporary this research feels today. In times dominated by hypertechnology and dematerialization, Metamagico places the body, ritual, ancestral memory and even magical thinking back at the center as alternative forms of knowledge.
Title: Claudio Costa. Metamagico
When: until October 11, 2026
Where: PAV – Parco Arte Vivente, Turin
