In Florence, the Renaissance courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi is transformed into a meeting place of epochs, languages and visions with The Message, the new site-specific installation signed by internationally renowned American artist KAWS. The work, promoted and organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation, inaugurates a new stage in the dialogue between contemporary art and historical heritage that has characterized the Florentine institution’s programming for years.
Curated by Arturo Galansino, general director of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, The Message is a monumental installation that fuses KAWS’s global visual culture with the austere elegance of Renaissance architecture. The intervention fits into the central courtyard of the palace, offering a reflection on the meaning and transmission of messages in the age of hyperconnectedness. The artist reinterprets one of the most iconic subjects of the Western artistic tradition, theAnnunciation, the pivotal theme of the current exhibition dedicated to Beato Angelico, which can be visited until January 25, 2026(our review here), and transposes it into the visual language of the present.
Born in 1974 in Jersey City and now living in Brooklyn, KAWS is among the most influential figures on the contemporary scene for his ability to cross the barriers between art, pop culture and the marketplace. After his beginnings as a writer in the 1990s, he has built a recognizable iconographic universe dominated by hybrid figures and characters with eyes marked with an X, which have become symbols of an artistic language capable of combining irony and melancholy, playfulness and reflection. His works address universal emotions such as vulnerability, loneliness, solidarity and bewilderment, rendered through forms that oscillate between comic strip and monumental sculpture.
In The Message, the reference to the Annunciation, a subject deeply rooted in Beato Angelico’s painting, is translated into a contemporary key through a dialogue between spirituality and the everyday. The element of the cell phone emerges as a symbolic object, a sign of an age in which constant and immediate communication has become an almost sacred dimension of modern life. The human gesture, the contact, the announcement itself are transposed into the language of digital connection, where the message - the message, precisely - becomes a vehicle for a new kind of relationship.
The visual short-circuit between Renaissance monumentality and the pop plasticity of KAWS’s sculpture becomes the conceptual heart of the project. His seemingly playful work turns out to be an investigation of the contemporary condition, where the saturation of symbols and overlapping messages define the perception of reality. In this context, KAWS’s intervention is not just an artistic reinterpretation but an act of confrontation with the history of art and with the very meaning of the image, in a place - Palazzo Strozzi - that has been promoting a dialogue for years “We are proud to present the work of KAWS, a contemporary American artist among the most famous and recognizable on the international scene,” says Arturo Galansino, Director General of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi. "Following on the heels of our series of projects signed by the major protagonists of contemporary art, KAWS has created a totally new site-specific project for Palazzo Strozzi. The Message offers an unprecedented confrontation between eras, forms and visions, activating references to traditional iconography and the everydayness of our present."
“A few years ago Arturo Galansino invited me to make a work of mine for the Courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi and told me about the Beato Angelico exhibition,” says KAWS. "The Message is a work that I imagined myself in dialogue with the great master of Renaissance art. It is about people and how they communicate, and what is said and what is lost. I think it’s a contemporary interpretation of a very old idea."
“For the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation, supporting a project like this means expanding our vision: believing in art as a place of encounter and participation,” says Andy Bianchedi, President of the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation. "We are proud to continue the journey of the Palazzo Strozzi Future Art program, promoting artists who courageously make new connections between eras and visions. In a time when we are increasingly immersed in digital communication, The Message by KAWS invites us to stop and observe a gesture so everyday, yet so symbolic, it becomes an invitation to reflect on our present."
The Florence installation joins a long series of exhibitions by KAWS. His works have been hosted by some of the world’s most important museum institutions: in 2025 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville; in 2024 at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; in 2023 at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; in 2022 at the Serpentine Gallery in London; in 2021 at the Mori Arts Center Gallery in Tokyo and the Brooklyn Museum in New York; and in 2019 at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.
The Message confirms Palazzo Strozzi’s desire to offer itself as a laboratory for the encounter between past and contemporary. The work, open to the public free of charge, offers itself as an opportunity for citizens, tourists and art lovers to meet, continuing the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi’s commitment to making contemporary culture accessible to all.
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| Florence, KAWS brings The Message, a tribute to Beato Angelico, to Palazzo Strozzi |
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