Human creativity and artificial intelligence: in Bologna, thirty young women artists in dialogue with AI

From February 7 to March 1, 2026, the Museum of Industrial Heritage in Bologna presents the exhibition Artificial Intelligence Creative Intelligence. Thirty Young Women Artists in Dialogue with Technology, curated by Virginia Farina and Simone Martinetto, born from the collaboration with the Liceo Artistico “Francesco Arcangeli” of Bologna. The exhibition is part of the institutional program of ART CITY Bologna 2026, the program of exhibitions, events and initiatives promoted by the Municipality of Bologna with the support of BolognaFiere on the occasion of Arte Fiera.

The project starts from a central question: what remains of the creative process and the deeply human ability to imagine and reinvent reality in the face of the generative power of Artificial Intelligence?

An innovative educational and artistic journey involved thirty students from the Liceo Artistico “Francesco Arcangeli” high school in Bologna, who were called to confront the potential and limits of new technologies. Guided by photographer Simone Martinetto, they explored the collections of the Museum of Industrial Heritage to investigate the complex relationship between theautomatism of the algorithm and the depth of the human creative gesture.

The boundary between real and artificial appears in this era to be increasingly fragile and ambiguous, as images generated by simple digital prompts are often indistinguishable from those produced by humans. The students accepted the challenge of establishing a conscious dialogue with the machine to offer a novel reinterpretation of museum collections.

The approach taken was overtly experimental: the Museum’s founding themes, from industrial heritage to technology, from labor to innovation, were translated into keywords for the Midjourney software, an Artificial Intelligence program capable of generating images from textual descriptions. However, these digital outputs do not represent the end point of the project, but rather a visual counterpoint: it is precisely from the dialectical confrontation between algorithmic imagination and human sensibility that the photographic and artistic works on display were born, in which the creative gesture regains centrality through experience, intuition and subjectivity. The result is a visual dialogue that goes beyond the purely aesthetic dimension to interrogate the deep and irreplaceable meaning of creativity. While Artificial Intelligence stands out for its analytical capacity and processing speed, it is nevertheless lacking in intuition and sense-making, often ending up reproducing stereotypes based on statistical models. The exhibition aims to highlight how human creativity remains unique. AI is thus reread not as an antagonist, but as a tool that, if used with awareness, can expand and sustain the imagination.

The project also highlights the educational value of creativity in an advanced technological context, emphasizing that it is not just a spontaneous inspiration nor an exclusive prerogative of art, but a skill that is built through commitment, error management and critical comparison. The students got involved by translating ideas and emotions into images, in an experience that intertwines school and museum, art and science, craftsmanship and technology.

Presented in the exhibition are the thirty photographs created and reworked by the young artists in response to the images generated by Artificial Intelligence, along with their notes and sketches produced while visiting the museum collections. Also screened are works dedicated to the theme of technology and a video documenting the experimentation and educational-creative process that gave rise to the project.

Cultural mediation activities are planned for Saturday, Feb. 7 and Feb. 14, 2026, from 2 to 6 p.m. Industrial Heritage Museum workers, recognizable by the pin with the “Ask Me” symbol, will welcome visitors to the exhibition spaces, accompanying them in the viewing of the backstage film and photographic works, often flanked by short texts that return the young artists’ point of view.

Hours:
Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Closed Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Tickets: Full 5 euros, concessions 3 euros; special concessions for young people between 19 and 25 years 2 euros. Free for Culture Card holders. During ART CITY Bologna (Feb. 5 to 8, 2026) free for holders of any type of Arte Fiera ticket.

Human creativity and artificial intelligence: in Bologna, thirty young women artists in dialogue with AI

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