Six exhibitions not to be missed until mid-March and why go and see them in Milan, Florence, Nuoro and Turin

This time we present a selection of appointments to see until mid-March, with a small focus on Milan.

Because it hosts the MuseoCity event which sees the participation of over 110 city institutions between museums, archives, foundations and galleries and a truly dense schedule of appointments.

We have chosen four for the sake of brevity, but on the site you will find everything you need to move around the largest widespread museum in Lombardy.

We talk about ancient design (with Napoleon's centrepiece) and contemporary (with the works of fashion designer Stefano Chiassai), of photography as architecture of a visual alphabet to build (in the shots by Emilio Scanavino) and fashion, music and revolutions in an exhibition on clubbing that is also to be experienced: in the evening the spaces of the Pac that host it become a disco.

Also in Milan there is an exhibition dedicated to the photographer Guy Bordin, wizard of scenic composition, architect of colors and graphic designer of glossy make-up for his models.

A number of lots of furnishings from the legendary Bauer Palazzo hotel in Venice are also arriving in the Lombard capital, which will be auctioned in April in Paris. Artcurial turns it into a small exhibition that is an immersion in the history of design at the service of hospitality.

We will then go to Nuoro where architecture and cinema are told in a fairly unique exhibition: it tells the story of the Potëmkin staircase, so named by the citizens of Odessa following the legendary film by Ėjzenštejn, but designed in the 19th century by the architect Boffo.

Finally, two major exhibitions talk about art.

The contemporary one arrives at Palazzo Strozzi which, to celebrate 30 years of activity of the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, brings together the stars of the last 40 years, from Maurizio Cattelan to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

The art of New York in the 60s, on the other hand, is on display at the Pinacoteca Agnelli with an almost unknown artist in Italy, Lee Lozano.

Why see them: this selection is a bouquet of mixed flowers with the most diverse scents and colors that will satisfy even the most varied tastes. From the provocative and ironic contemporary to the more classic Napoleonic design passing through the cinema, clubbing and New York art of the last century, an articulated and multifaceted journey into the concept of art is composed.

MuseoCity, Milan, various locations, from 3 to 5 March

The new edition of the event that transforms Milan into a single widespread exhibition space opens on March 3, thanks to the involvement of over 110 museum institutions.

The theme this time is the light of museums, declined from different points of view, from the visual arts to science via design and architecture. The program is very rich and also offers the opportunity to see works kept in other cities of Lombardy for the occasion, hosted in some Milanese museums (in the Dialoghi section).

Here we recommend a small selection of appointments.

The first is with the design: the centerpiece commissioned from the Roman mosaicist Giacomo Raffaelli for the banquet in honor of Napoleon and his coronation as King of Italy will be exceptionally exhibited in the scope of A casa del Viceroy.

Eugenio di Beauharnais in Napoleonic Milan, an insight into the art, taste and fashion of the time (at Palazzo Reale until 4 June). The ADI Design Museum is part of the initiative with an exhibition by Stefano Noise, Beyond the lockdown.

Designs, fabrics, colors: a daily commentary on the main facts that accompanied the most difficult days of the pandemic at the hands of Chiassai's imagination.

Invented and felt-tip characters lead you into a world where you can get lost in boundless beauty. Like the creativity of the fashion designer who has declined this work on different means of expression. It starts from an unprecedented immersive installation whose leitmotif is the fabric: 17 tapestries made on a Jacquard loom, clothes and design elements, such as seats and tables, which take up the motif of the fabric become the emblem of a mechanism that has converted negativity into a future-oriented path (Adi Design Museum, Until 4 April).

The Archivio Emilio Scanavino opens its doors with a new exhibition dedicated to the photography of the versatile Genoese artist. With the title Emilio Scanavino. Light and matter. Photographs from the 60s his philosophy of looking is on stage: “I like to photograph. But I'm not looking for beautiful images, I like to go around and portray the skeleton of nature, some holes, some furrows that the centuries have dug in the mountains…”.

A portrait painter of that contemporary archeology that has guided him in many of his material works, he follows the thread of spatialism and the informal to compose the alphabet of a language made up of graphic signs and plastic, physiological and tangible, organic and abstract. (Archivio Emilio Scanavino open to the public from 3 to 5 March from 10 am to 7 pm; from 6 March to 23 April by reservation).

Finally, an exhibition event at the PAC.

The title could be The 72 hours that shook the Contemporary Art Pavilion because the exhibition is DISCORIVOLUZIONE. You Got to Get In to Get Outas well as telling the clubbing scenario through site-specific installations, makes the Pac a disco.

During the day you visit the exhibition which describes the history of an ephemeral and revolutionary world, speaking of discos as places where battles for identity and civil rights took place, fashion and costume phenomena were born and staged dance and electronic and non-electronic music.

To do this, the students of the Interior Design Laboratory of the Polytechnic have developed three sections and five disco-installations. Who in the evening, during the musical events, will express their gaze on the present and future of the disco. On Friday and Saturday evenings Le Cannibale transforms the PAC into an exclusive club with Daniele Baldelli, founder of the famous Cosmic and considered the first Italian DJ.

To support him Fabio Monesi, DJ and producer of international fame. Saturday night guests were the German artist Lena Willikens, resident DJ of the famous Salon Des Amateurs, the Japanese musician and singer Hiroko Hacci. (Pac, via Palestro 14, Milan. The exhibition can be visited at 10.19.30. evening events are paid, from 10pm to 3am)

Who will like it: Everyone likes MuseoCity, from fans of small realities to be discovered such as archives or monothematic museums, to lovers of clubbbing, passing through the visual arts and design.

Useful information: The MuseoCity event takes place between 3 and 5 March. All information on the event website

Guy Bordin. Storyteller, Armani Silos, Milan, until August 31st

Tells stories Guy Bordin, the French photographer who chose Alfred Hitchcock and Edward Hopper as putative masters and yellow and noir as genres of reference.

His storytelling is all in a single shot, which becomes dense, often with saturated colors or deconstructed shapes, through a study of the unique composition. Because this is precisely his distinctive trait, coming from his artistic studies that formed him as a painter.

An essential painter, ironic and provocateur of photography: this is what Guy Bordin was in his work for Vogue and for advertising, always careful to put photography in the foreground and not the product, in a incredible freedom creative.

And painting always guides him in the creation of the Bourdin code: the meticulous study of colours, the compositions suspended between the absurd and the sublime, the plays of light and shadow and the 'glossy' make-up of the models they are the architectural elements of his construction of the image.

On display 100 photos selected by Giorgio Armani together with The Guy Bourdin Estate.

Who will like it: those who love photography, fashion, Hitchcock's films and Hopper's intimate views.

Useful information: Armani Silos, via Bergognone 40, Milan, open from Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 7pm.

The furnishings of the Hotel Bauer Palazzo di Venezia, Artcurial, Milan, from 2 to March 31st

It was the 1940s when the Hotel Bauer in Venice had decided to put a hand to its furnishings to give itself an updated, indeed avant-garde look.

That was the last time and the hotel, which has always been a point of reference in Venice, was characterized by that now retro style, both fascinating and reassuring. Until today.

Because on April 24 the Bauer furnishings will go to auction in Paris in view of a total renovation of its spaces and Artcurial organizes a preview to show the public the wonders of design with some lots.

But be careful: it's not just a trip to the 40s of the last century. The Bauer Hotel is an eclectic place that preserves styles from different eras, from Byzantine Gothic to modernism to contemporary exterior furnishings, to compose a real history of taste in the art of hospitality .

Who will like it: those who love Venice, design and diving into different historical periods.

Useful information: Artcurial, Corso Venezia 22, free admission.

Reaching for the stars. From Maurizio Cattelan to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, from March 4 to 18 June

What has happened in the last 40 years in contemporary art?

Analyzing the work done by the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation of Turin is an excellent way to take stock and try to formulate an answer to this question.

Or you can go to Palazzo Strozzi in Florence which, to celebrate the first 30 years of the Sandretto Foundation, has organized an anthological exhibition of over 70 works by the most important Italian and international contemporary artists, including Maurizio Cattelan, Cindy Sherman, Damien Hirst, Paola Pivi, Lara Favaretto, William Kentridge, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Sarah Lucas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Curated by Arturo Galansino, general director of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation, the exhibition winds its way along all the spaces of the Palazzo, Strozzina and courtyard included, with the idea of creating a platform for experimentation and participation in which works from the collection come together, new productions created for the exhibition and a program of activities and projects with the artists.

There are really all and also all the media through which contemporary art has expressed itself and continues to express itself today.

Along with patronage and collecting. As the curator underlined: "Hosting a collection like this in Florence means celebrating the values of patronage and patronage in the city where great collecting was born".

Who will like it: pop lovers, the irreverent, those who want to take a trip back to the contemporary.

Useful information: Palazzo Strozzi, piazza Strozzi, Florence. The exhibition is open every day from 10 to 20, on Thursdays until 23.

ODESSA STEPS. The Potëmkin Staircase between cinema and architecture, Man, Nuoro, from 3 March to June 25

Those who have seen it cannot forget the steps of the Battleship Potemkin.

In that film, later derided in an episode by Fantozzi for its (almost unbearable) film-proof length, tragic episodes take place on the steps of that staircase, including the fall of a pram, leaving the spectator with bated breath for the fate of the newborn…

The scene made the history of cinema and the film, from 1925, is a milestone in Soviet filmography directed by the great Sergej Michajlovič Ėjzenštejn.

So much so that everyone calls that place Potemkin Stairs.

The original project, a monumental link between the sea and the city, was signed in the 1830s by the architect Francesco Carlo Boffo (1796-1867).

To tell the story that has remained shrouded in mystery for a long time, it is this exhibition that brings back the tradition that linked it to Sardinia and new documentary pieces. The exhibition itinerary is an interesting opportunity to show how architecture, urban planning, art and the biography of a man can build territories, habits and a collective imagination.

Who will like it: cinema enthusiasts, those curious about the present and the past will love it.

Useful information: Man, via Sebastiano Satta 27, open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 7pm.

Lee Lozano. Strike, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin, from 8 March to 23 July.

Very little is known in Italy about the painter, visual and conceptual artist, pioneer of the New York art scene of the 60s, so much so that this is the first monographic exhibition dedicated to her.

On display is a wide selection of her works from her artistic career, as prolific as it is short: everything is concentrated in twelve years, from 1960 to 1972. A painter by training, she moved to New York from Chicago to quickly establish herself as an artist .

She maintains her painting as her means of expression of choice, with an approach that distinguishes her from the movements of the period, marked by pop art, minimalism and conceptual art.

If it is true that she makes the latter her own, she however rejects any form of categorization of art and any system of power.

The exhibition itinerary leads the public right through her philosophy. We begin with figurative works and drawings close to expressionism, we pass through the period of Tools, dedicated to large-scale portraits of tools, to arrive at Dropout, a work exclusively conceptual which marks the abandonment of Lozano from the artistic scene.

A very interesting discovery, which is also a cross-section of New York in the Sixties.

Who will like it: those seeking autonomy of thought in art, those who believe in individual expression, those who want to discover new things.

Useful information: Pinacoteca Gianni e Marella Agnelli, via Nizza 230/103, Turin, open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 7pm.