A world-famous contemporary video artist, a forty-year career in electronic sound and image technology, and an unprecedented exhibition: three major elements that describe Bill Viola’s presence at Palazzo Reale.

Curated by Viola’s wife, Kira Perov, fifteen major works address all the themes dear to the artist: the transience of human nature, life and death, Renaissance art, oriental philosophy as a basis for investigating the present, the relationship of man and nature.

Between his slow-motion videos that capture human emotions, and his provoking works that narrate the threshold between life and death, this really is an exhibition not to be missed. 

From € 13 to € 17

Condensing stories into a single shot is a talent that only great photographers can claim to have, and Guy Bourdin is one of these.

In the exhibition at the Armani/Silos space, inaugurated on the occasion of Milan Fashion Week, one hundred photographs reveal the talent of this fashion photographer who was able to create a world all of his own in the vein of the Surrealists (Man Ray was his long-standing friend), Alfred Hitchcock and Edward Hopper.

The hyperreal saturated colours, plays of light and shadow, but also the models 'glossy' make-up are all part of his distinctive signature visual code in compositions that hover between the absurd and the sublime.

The museum spaces are a series of rooms dedicated to images concentrated on a single colour - red, green and pink – to then move on to his black and white works, concluding with the advertising campaigns that seem to be reconstructions of crime scenes.

Provocation, but also extreme creative freedom: explore the world of Bourdin.

€ 12

Born in Rome in 1980, Gian Maria Tosatti lives and works in Naples, and has been working on the NOw/here (or nowhere?) exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca for over two years. A project that is conceived as open questions to confront the visitor by metaphorically asking “How do you feel?” Here, now and always. 

The two cycles of paintings designed to interact with the Pirelli HangarBicocca spaces, Ritratti (2022) and NOw/here (2023), create an opportunity to address current events as well as the human condition in this complex moment of time, which sees a society poised between catastrophe and evolution.

Ritratti is composed of four gold and rust paintings on iron panels, which physically restore the dimension of the passage of time through the corrosion of the metal.

Whilst the NOw/here series consists of ten large canvases of graphite and white charcoal suspended from the ceiling. Thanks to the shades created by the material, Tosatti depicts horizons dotted with enigmatic white spheres which, like radiating points, represent the symbol of light, a recurring metaphor in his works. 

Free entry

For many of us the word ‘Surrealism’ might conjure up images of Dali's Melting or Soft watches, or Magritte’s apple obscuring the face of a man with a bowler hat, but Surrealism is much more than this. To find out more about this artistic movement that captivated Europe and the United States, visit the exhibition at the MUDEC Museo delle Culture.

180 works - comprising paintings, sculptures, drawings, documents and artifacts - are on loan from the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, which can claim to possess the most unique surrealist art collection in the world. The works depict the fundamental themes upon which surrealist research has focused - dream and reality, psyche, love and desire, a new model of beauty.

Each room invites us to discover the Surrealists' main premises and motivations: the use of found objects, automatic techniques or game-like rules; the artists strived to exclude the rational, in the hope of creating a poetic shock that would change the world.

Discover the world from another point of view.

From € 18 to € 20

Helmut Newton is arguably the most published and most famous photographer of all time and, still today, his work is a constant source of inspiration for generations of photographers.

The exhibition at Palazzo Reale, Legacy, is a retrospective which, in chronological order, traces Newton's entire career on the occasion of the centenary of his birth: 250 photographs, magazines, documents and videos guide us through iconic images and a corpus of unpublished shots, presented for the first time in Italy.

Lesser-known aspects of Newton's work are revealed, with a specific focus on his most unconventional fashion shoots, presenting the Polaroids and contact sheets that demonstrate the artist’s creative process.

“My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain”, said Newton: let yourself be amazed!

From € 15 to € 17

In the same period, you can visit the Michelangelo Pistoletto exhibition in the magnificent Sala delle Cariatidi in Palazzo Reale. La Pace Preventiva  - The Preventive Peace.

Born in Ravenna in 1972, Yuri Ancarani lives and works in Milano. His works are inspired by a mixture of documentary film and contemporary art, and the exhibition at the PAC is an opportunity to learn about the fundamental stages of his past works and a new specially-designed project.

A journey into the territories of moving images.

Who hasn’t ever dreamt of stepping into a work of art and becoming part of it? To sit next to Renoir's ballerinas, to look upwards to Van Gogh's starry sky, to reach out and caress Turner's sea. Thanks to Leandro Erlich’s extraordinary artworks, all this becomes a reality: the artist creates mega installations with which the public relates and interacts, becoming part of the artwork itself.

So, there are lifts that go nowhere, facades which, amazingly, you can ascend, escalators that are tangled: everything is completely different from what it seems, space follows different rules, and the normal becomes extraordinary.

From April 22nd to October 4th, Palazzo Reale hosts the first monographic European exhibition dedicated to Erlich, following his exhibitions around the world that have attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors with his unique installations.

Are you ready to let the extraordinary into the ordinary?

Tickets from € 13 to € 17

Sebastião Salgado spent six years totally immersed in the territories and the soul of the Brazilian Amazon; the evocative images which we can now admire in the exhibition at the Fabbrica del Vapore are the fruits of this incredible expedition.

The rainforest, rivers, mountains and the indigenous peoples are depicted in over 200 works on display; the images interact with the realistic sounds of the environment through the sound landscape created by Jean-Michel Jarre.

By drawing attention to the incomparable beauty of this region and the fragility of its ecosystem, Salgado invites us to reflect on the current ecological situation and the relationship that humans have with it today.

2023 marks the Triennale Milano’s centennial anniversary which will be celebrated in grand style with a rich and varied programme of exhibitions, events and performances.

The Museo del Design Italiano reopens on April 15th with an itinerary that takes us from the cultural institution’s foundation in 1923 to the development of technological, material and social research that has transformed the identity, aesthetics and main features of Italian design. 
The narrative is expressed through the reconstruction of some interiors, and the exhibition concludes with the Design Platform space created ad hoc for temporary exhibitions with a focus on contemporary design.

There will be several other interesting exhibitions throughout spring in Milan. To name a few: Angelo Mangiarotti. Quando le strutture prendono forma - When Structures Take Shape (January 27th - April 23rd, 2023), Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, one of Australia's greatest contemporary female artists (February 16th - May 14th, 2023), Triennale. Home Sweet Home (from May to September).