Lovers of design flock to Milan for Salone del Mobile and other Design Week festivities, but they’d be remiss to head home without taking in some of the art on view. When you’ve had your fill of furnishings, these shows offer a chance to venture beyond the fairgrounds and into the expansive Italian city. Here, we’ve compiled the shows most worth making time for between showroom visits and aperitivi.
“Bearing” by Gabrielle Goliath
Where: Galleria Raffaella Cortese
When: Through September 3
Why It’s Worth a Look: Gabrielle Goliath, widely recognized for her multimedia and research-driven practice, makes a deliberate turn to a traditional medium in her latest exhibition. Using oils, watercolors, chalk, and pastels, Goliath addresses her recurring themes—mourning, violence, and the politics of visibility—with a gentler hand.
Know Before You Go: This show lands at a particularly charged moment for the South African artist, just after her exclusion from the South African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale due to her work’s engagement with the war in Gaza. Beginning May 5, Goliath will exhibit her banned project just outside the Biennale fairgrounds.
“Dash” by Cao Fei
Where: Fondazione Prada
When: Through September 28
Why It’s Worth a Look: Over the past three years, Cao Fei immersed herself in farmlands across southern and northwestern China and Southeast Asia, observing the emergence of smart agriculture. The resulting show, which addresses drone farming, is one of the most surprising currently on view in Milan.
Know Before You Go: The artist explores the relationship between harvest and survival in the age of A.I. through a temple stitched from fertilizer bags and videos of farmers across Southeast Asia offering flowers and incense to their drones.
“Le Alchimiste” / “I wish to die in autumn moonlight even in darkness not to be lost” by Anselm Kiefer
Where: Palazzo Reale & Lia Rumma Gallery
When: Through September 27 (Palazzo Reale) and July 23 (Lia Rumma)
Why It’s Worth a Look: Anselm Kiefer is doing double duty in Milan right now, and both shows are worth your time. At Palazzo Reale, 42 large-scale canvases—conceived specifically for the scarred, spectacular Sala delle Cariatidi—pay tribute to history’s forgotten female alchemists. At Lia Rumma, Kiefer’s work similarly considers mythological heroines like Calliope and Melpomene.
Know Before You Go: The Sala delle Cariatidi was severely damaged by bombing in 1943, including 40 sculptures in the Hall of Caryatids. That history animates the show as an act of resurrection. Meanwhile, the title of the show at Lia Rumma takes its title from a poem by the 19th-century Japanese poet and Buddhist nun Ōtagaki Rengetsu.
“The House That Jack Built” by Rirkrit Tiravanija
Where: Pirelli HangarBicocca
When: Through July 26
Why It’s Worth a Look: This is the first retrospective dedicated to Rirkrit Tiravanija’s more than 30 years of architectural and spatial research. It takes its name from an 18th-century English nursery rhyme of the same name, evoking the ways in which architecture is influenced by, and influences, those living in and around it.
Know Before You Go: At HangarBicocca, Tiravanija created an intimate and interactive space for the audience to explore. Tea is available daily, in addition to children’s workshops and music rehearsal studios.
“The Second Shadow: Dozie Kanu Mirroring Marc Camille Chaimowicz”
Where: Fondazione ICA Milano
When: Through May 23
Why It’s Worth a Look: The show creates a conversation between Portugal-based American artist Dozie Kanu, who creates sculptural installations from found objects, and the late French artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz, who explored the emotional and political dimensions of decorative objects and design.
Know Before You Go: Curated by Rita Selvaggio, the exhibition is set up across two rooms: one that Chaimowicz created in dedication to Jean Cocteau, and another by Kanu that reflects on and reinterprets this earlier work.
“Social Unrest”
Where: Matta
When: Through September 12
Why It’s Worth a Look: The group show brings together Hannah Black, Ivan Cheng, Tony Cokes, Alessandro Di Pietro, Satoshi Fujiwara, Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, Tiffany Sia, and Sung Tieu for an exploration of contemporary revolts. The exhibition combines both research and art to explore how societal structures contribute to collective violence.
Know Before You Go: Matta is one of Milan’s most interesting new spaces for emerging art. The gallery began in 2022 as an itinerant experiment popping up across the city, including in the basement of Republic, a 1980s nightclub, and Piero Bottoni’s Palazzo INA tower block on Corso Sempione.
“Marcel Duchamp & Sturtevant: Dialogues Are Mostly Fried Snowballs”
Where: Thaddaeus Ropac Milan, Palazzo Belgioioso
When: Through July 23
Why It’s Worth a Look: The first exhibition to put Marcel Duchamp and Sturtevant in direct conversation, this show pairs the originator of the readymade alongside the artist who spent four decades reworking his pieces (among others) in a radical challenge to authorship.
Know Before You Go: Highlights include one of only nine existing examples of Duchamp’s Bottle Rack, as well as Sturtevant’s take on Duchamp’s famous painting Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2). The show provides a complement to MoMA’s Duchamp retrospective, halfway across the world.
“Mimmo Paladino”
Where: Massimo de Carlo Milan
When: April 22–May 30
Why It’s Worth a Look: One of the central figures of the Transavanguardia movement, Mimmo Paladino has spent decades working across painting, sculpture, printmaking, and installation. This is his first exhibition at Massimo de Carlo’s headquarters at Casa Corbellini-Wassermann, one of architect Piero Portaluppi’s most recognizable projects.
Know Before You Go: The show unfolds room by room—from muted canvases to a studio dedicated to literary icons—charting Paladino’s artistic journey. The show precedes another Paladino show opening at Palazzo Citterio on May 16.
“Ostinato” by Roberto de Pinto
Where: Francesca Minini
When: Through May 9
Why It’s Worth a Look: Roberto de Pinto, who graduated from Brera Academy in 2021, has developed a practice around a single recurring figure—a male alter ego with dark features, often nude. The show at Francesca Minini is his most ambitious to date, exploring variations of the same figure in three chapters, two of which are inspired by a recent performance in Turin, where the artist cut out a selection of his drawings and placed them along his own body.
Know Before You Go: For these works, De Pinto has used an Ancient Greek technique called encaustic, in which pigments are bound in hot wax.
“Play, Part, Cut, (A City)” by François Durel
Where: Zaza’
When: Through May 15
Why It’s Worth a Look: The Paris-based artist François Durel manipulates recovered farming tools and found objects, wrapping some in hand-stitched leather and transforming symbols of agriculture and familiar labor into tactile art. The show builds upon the artist’s enduring interest in discipline and the labor economy.
Know Before You Go: As an art gallery, Zaza’ resists easy categorization, operating between Milan and Naples. It was founded in 2019 by two architects, Alessandro Bava and Fabrizio Ballabio.
“Forms in Formation: Alice Faloretti, Ezio Gribaudo, and Mattia Sinigaglia”
Where: Casa MB
When: Through May 16
Why It’s Worth a Look: A group exhibition featuring the work of Alice Faloretti, Ezio Gribaudo, and Mattia Sinigaglia explores approaches to form across three generations of Italian artists. Faloretti’s hazy geological paintings play well with Gribaudo’s restrained works on paper, while Sinigaglia incorporates carved wood and ceramic elements into his oil paintings.
Know Before You Go: Casa MB is by appointment only, so plan accordingly. Its intimate setup in a Milanese apartment offers a cozy, domestic alternative to a classic gallery space, further emphasizing the intimate nature of the work on view.
“Man Ray: M for Dictionary”
Where: Gió Marconi
When: Through July 24
Why It’s Worth a Look: Presented on the 50th anniversary of his death, this retrospective is organized around Man Ray’s use of language rather than photography. The show was developed in collaboration with the Fondazione Marconi, which traces its lineage back to Studio Marconi, the gallery that gave Man Ray his first Milan exhibition in 1969.
Know Before You Go: The show is structured like a dictionary, organized alphabetically rather than chronologically—a format that suits an artist who treated every medium as a space for experimentation.
“Kenji Ide / Nicola Martini”
Where: Clima Gallery
When: Through May 16
Why It’s Worth a Look: Clima presents a double header by two sculptors working across materials, cultures, and geographies: Japanese artist Kenji Ide and Italian artist Nicola Martini. The latter incorporates volcano basalt and industrial materials into his recent work, while Ide’s pieces explore scale and space through small objects placed on the ground.
Know Before You Go: Martini began transforming the space back in 2013, when he first applied photosensitive tar to the walls from floor to ceiling, stripping away the traditional white gallery box.
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