In the idea of Bologna as a large, diffuse museum, the Civic Museums continue to play a strategic role, contributing to ART CITY Bologna with exhibition programming that connects historical heritage with contemporary artistic research, flanked by public appointments and mediation activities dedicated to different audiences.
Also confirmed in 2026 are access facilities and extended openings designed to broaden participation. From February 5 to 8, 2026, admission to MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna and Museo Morandi is free; for the other venues involved, access is free for holders of any Arte Fiera ticket. Casa Morandi, Villa delle Rose, Museo per la Memoria di Ustica, Museo Civico d’Arte Industriale and Galleria Davia Bargellini remain freely accessible, as usual.
MAMbo presents John Giorno: The Performative Word, curated by Lorenzo Balbi, the first major institutional retrospective dedicated to poet and performer John Giorno (New York, 1936-2019), a leading figure of the New York avant-garde scene and a figure capable of redefining the boundaries between poetry, performance and visual arts. MAMbo’s Project Room features Mattia Moreni. The Bologna Anthological Exhibition, 1965, curated by Claudio Spadoni and Pasquale Fameli, part of the largest exhibition project ever dedicated to the artist. The exhibition rereads the historic 1965 solo show curated by Francesco Arcangeli, Moreni’s first institutional exhibition in Bologna.
At Villa delle Rose, Flavio de Marco’s Screen Life exhibition, curated by Lorenzo Balbi, is part of the in-depth look at contemporary Italian painting, spanning twenty-six years of the artist’s work with about seventy works.
The Museo Morandi proposes Etel Adnan and Giorgio Morandi. Vibrations, curated by Daniel Blanga Gubbay, an unprecedented dialogue between two central figures in twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, aimed at investigating their poetic affinities and formal resonances. At Casa Morandi, Concetto Pozzati. By and for Morandi, curated by Maura Pozzati, traces more than 40 years of critical and artistic confrontation between Concetto Pozzati and the work of Giorgio Morandi.
At the Museo Civico Medievale, Alessandro Moreschini presents L’ornamento non è più un delitto, a project curated by Raffaele Quattrone and Lily van der Stokker, which rereads the decorative tradition as an ethical practice and gesture of care. The rooms of the Lapidarium house Bartolomeo Cesi (1556-1629). Painting of Silence in the Age of the Carracci, curated by Vera Fortunati, the first monographic exhibition dedicated to one of the main interpreters of Bolognese figurative culture between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
At the Collezioni Comunali d’Arte, SCULPTURES by Emanuele Becheri, curated by Lorenzo Balbi, relates seven previously unpublished terracotta works to the historical context of Palazzo d’Accursio.
At the Museo Civico d’Arte Industriale and Galleria Davia Bargellini, Sergia Avveduti’s solo exhibition Ombra Custode, curated by Elena Forin, interweaves historical memory and contemporaneity, celebrating care as a creative gesture.
The Museo internazionale e biblioteca della musica hosts Per vari motivi - Parte II by Eva Marisaldi and Enrico Serotti, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto, a sound path that reactivates works made by the couple over the past two decades.
The Museum of Industrial Heritage tackles the theme of Artificial Intelligence with Artificial Intelligence Creative Intelligence, curated by Simone Martinetto and Virginia Farina, involving thirty students from the Liceo Artistico Arcangeli high school in a dialogue between algorithmic creation and manual dexterity.
Also part of the civic system is the Museum for the Memory of Ustica, which houses the permanent installation A proposito di Ustica by Christian Boltanski, created in 2007.
TheAcademy of Fine Arts of Bologna renews its participation in ART CITY Bologna with ABABO OPENSHOW, a diffuse exhibition, created under the supervision of Enrico Fornaroli and Fabiola Naldi, that transforms didactic and laboratory spaces into exhibition venues animated by the works of students from the Departments of Visual Arts and Design and Applied Arts. The Aula Magna of the Academy hosts ARTalk, the series of meetings dedicated to an in-depth study of the poetics of some of the protagonists of the ART CITY Bologna 2026 solo exhibitions. Coordinated by Marinella Paderni, the program includes public dialogues between artists and curators, hosted in different city venues. The Academy also hosts IN VOLO - Journeys and Systems of Contemporary Art, an exhibition of the finalists of the seventh edition of the Young Art Award 2025, promoted by the Gruppo Giovani di Confindustria Emilia. The exhibition presents the ten works selected from the students of the Biennium.
Alchemilla proposes Martial Artists // Art City Edition, curated by Veronica Santi, an experimental format based on live verbal confrontations between pairs of artists who question each other in a dynamic of dialogue-clash.
On the occasion of Arte Fiera 49, Marcello Maloberti creates KOLOSSAL, a site-specific intervention that welcomes visitors at the entrance to the fair: a Bologna street sign, lifted by a crane and suspended between earth and sky, becomes an unstable symbol of urban memory and collective history.
The Library of San Giorgio in Poggiale, housed in a former 16th-century church, opens to the public, preserving the library holdings of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna along with important works of contemporary art, including works by Claudio Parmiggiani.
At Casa Carducci, In dialogue takes shape, the first chapter of Sonia Lenzi’s Unlikely Monuments project, curated by Eléonore Grassi, dedicated to temporary monuments celebrating female figures, inviting reflection on the modes of representation in public history.
At Casa Saraceni, headquarters of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna, the exhibition Futurismo e Ritorno all’ordine nelle Collezioni della Fondazione Carisbo, curated by Angelo Mazza, makes rarely exhibited works from the first half of the 20th century accessible.
The Golinelli Foundation presents at the Golinelli Arts and Sciences Center Marino’s Favorites. Chapter II - Opus Mundi, the second event dedicated to the Marino Golinelli Collection, with more than fifty works addressing the great themes of the present and the future.
The Bologna Women’s Documentation Center hosts Reversal Exercise. Re-writing Practices by Daniela Comani, a project that investigates language, gender and history through videos and artist’s books.
Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna presents ART CITY Cinema, curated by Gian Luca Farinelli, at Cinema Modernissimo, exploring the intersections between cinema and contemporary visual arts. At the Galleria Modernissimo is Li ho visto, an exhibition dedicated to the original sketches of the posters created by Stefano Ricci for Cinema Modernissimo’s first year of activity.
In the Sala Cervi is staged Cinema Impero by Muna Mussie, an immersive performance that interweaves historical archives, artificial intelligence and emotional dimensions, designed for an individual experience.
The Former Church of San Barbaziano hosts Falling. When winds in Monsoon play, the White Peacock will sweep away, a new work-film by Driant Zeneli that combines political, ecological and poetic dimensions.
TheFormer Church of San Mattia presents CODEX - the echo of wireless becomes digital thought, a project reflecting on the origins of modern communication and the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, with a lecture by Neil Lawrence.
The Carlo Gajani Foundation welcomes Claudia Amatruda’s A Body Engineered by Water, an exhibition exploring the body as language through photographs, installations and video performances.
At the San Lazzaro di Savena venue, the Massimo and Sonia Cirulli Foundation presents The Visible Cities. The Modern City Between Imaginary and Real, an itinerary dedicated to the Italian architectural and urban imaginary of the first half of the 20th century, which returns the city as a laboratory of social and cultural experimentation. At the same venue, Giordano Bruno Guerri dialogues with journalist Massimo Cutò around the volume Audacia Ribellione Velocità. Astonishing Lives of Italian Futurists.
On view at MAST is Jeff Wall’s Living Working Surviving, curated by Urs Stahel: twenty-eight works dedicated to everyday life, the gestures of work and ordinary existence, which actually turn out to be complex and ambiguous visual constructions, inviting the viewer to an experience of slow and questioning observation.
The Lercaro Museum of Art offers a multifaceted program that interweaves contemporary art research, collection and mediation practices. Antonello Ghezzi ’s Coming to Light recounts the genesis of a land art project conceived in 2020; Échos des visages, curated by Giovanni Gardini and Michel Poivert, puts photography and mosaic in dialogue with the works of Laurent Lafolie and Clément Mitéran; Jacopo Mazzonelli ’s Persistence transforms soundscape into atmospheric phenomenon. Also related to the museum’s collection, Recidere by Jessica Ferro offers a poetic reflection on the fate of living forms. The museum also inaugurates L’Opera del Mese with Davide Maria Coltro, flanking the program with in-depth meetings and musical initiatives, with a focus on accessibility issues.
“Untitled” S.r.l., the Department of Education, Education and New Generations of the Municipality of Bologna and the Luigi Bombicci Educational Museum present Le cose non parlano perché non sanno cosa farsene del linguaggio, a solo exhibition by Arianna Pace, which investigates the natural world as an archive and form of knowledge.
As part of the exhibition Ineffable Lea. Lea Colliva (1901-1975) 50 years after her death, the Museo Ottocento Bologna proposes Lea Colliva VS Mirta Carroli, a dialogue between generations that will lead to the creation of a permanent commemorative work in the Lea Colliva Rotunda.
At the Museo San Domenico in Imola, the group show In bella mostra. Gifts of art to civic collections, curated by Oriana Orsi, presents works that have entered the collections thanks to donations and bequests, restoring the variety and richness of private collecting.
At theOpificio delle Acque, Elena Ciarrocchi presents TRAMATE. Thread, Water and Women, a project that interweaves gesture, memory and storytelling, also giving voice to the historical figure of Mabel of Bury St. Edmunds.
In theOratory of San Filippo Neri is Resto, a video installation by the duo MASBEDO, sponsored by the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, which deals with a painfully topical theme of contemporary news with modesty and evocative power.
For the live-action program, Fondazione Furla and Arte Fiera present Wardrobe, an unreleased project by Chalisée Naamani, which explores the mechanisms of representation of the body and identity through works conceived as “dress-images.”
Palazzo Bentivoglio hosts in its underground spaces the solo exhibition of Michael E. Smith, curated by Simone Menegoi and Tommaso Pasquali, a site-specific path that uses salvaged materials to build an intense and minimal perceptive experience. In the same context is garageBENTIVOGLIO, with the work Temporali by Alberto Garutti, which translates a natural phenomenon into everyday experience.
Palazzo Boncompagni welcomes Michelangelo Pistoletto. Dalla Cittadellarte allo Statodellarte, an exhibition curated by Silvia Evangelisti that traces more than 60 years of the artist’s research on the relationship between art, society and politics.
TheBologna Association for the Arts presents at Palazzo d’Accursio Pietro Pietra (1885-1956). La forza del segno, an anthological exhibition that brings together engravings, drawings, watercolors and paintings by the Bolognese artist.
At Palazzo De’ Toschi, in the Sala Convegni of the Banca di Bologna, is Miss America, a solo show of Francisco Tropacurated by Simone Menegoi.
Palazzo Fava. Palazzo delle Esposizioni celebrates the 550th anniversary of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s birth with the exhibition Michelangelo and Bologna, curated by Cristina Acidini and Alessandro Cecchi, which reconstructs the bond between the artist and the city.
At Palazzo Malvezzi de’ Medici, the exhibition Disseminare e condividere, curated by Vanna Romualdi, presents the work of students and graduates of the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts.
At Palazzo Paltroni is 3 X Sculpture, which puts Quinto Ghermandi, Marco Di Giovanni and Giulia Poppi in dialogue, offering an intergenerational look at sculptural practice.
In Imola, Palazzo Tozzoni hosts Keita Miyazaki’s The garden of vanities , an itinerary that includes installations made with salvaged materials and paper origami among the historic furnishings of the house museum.
In the Cortile d’Onore of Palazzo Zani is presented Occhio! Glimpses on the Territory Evolution, a project developed with students from the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna.
At the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, in the Salone degli Incamminati, the exhibition More Than This offers a critical survey of Atelier F, one of the most relevant experiences in recent contemporary Italian painting.
For the ninth edition of das - experimental art dialogues, CUBO Unipol presents Pointing Nemo. Beyond Space, Toward the Abyss, a solo exhibition by IOCOSE dedicated to the theme of NewSpace.
Zu.Art hosts All of a Sudden, an exhibition dedicated to the winners of the Zucchelli Competition and the Art Up 2025 Awards.
Closing the program is the participation of the Association of Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries - Confcommercio Ascom Bologna, which contributes with exhibitions and initiatives spread across independent exhibition spaces, completing an articulated panorama that returns ART CITY Bologna as a cultural ecosystem that is alive, plural and deeply connected to the city.
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| ART CITY Bologna 2026: the exhibitions in the Civic Museums and the institutional program |
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