Brescia Musei Foundation: presented the exhibition program 2026

Fondazione Brescia Musei has presented its cultural and artistic program for 2026, with a season ranging from exhibitions of international significance to projects to enhance the city’s historical heritage. The official announcement took place Thursday, Feb. 5, in the Council Chamber of Palazzo Loggia in Brescia, in the presence of Brescia Mayor Laura Castelletti, Brescia Musei Foundation President Francesca Bazoli and Foundation Director Stefano Karadjov, who outlined the main initiatives of the Civic Museums, Brescia Castle and Nuovo Eden Cinema.

The set of activities is part of an overall strategy aimed at protecting the city’s heritage, renewing exhibition routes and regenerating museums, with the goal of offering accessible and diverse cultural experiences. A constant of the year will be the development of the Roman Theater project, an initiative underway since 2022 that includes the construction of a new “stone theater” in the Archaeological Park of Roman Brescia. In 2026, the Foundation will lead the process to identify the project subject in charge of drawing up the Technical-Economic Feasibility Project (PFTE), based on the results of the ongoing excavations coordinated by the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the provinces of Brescia and Bergamo. The PFTE will also define the spaces for spectacular activities, complete the accessibility paths already started and plan the consolidation of the North body of Palazzo Maggi Gambara, integrating with the interventions of the South body by the Municipality of Brescia. The project benefits from the support of A2A, the Brescia Chamber of Commerce, donors, partners of the Alliance for Culture and private patrons.

The 2026 program resumes the exhibitions inaugurated in 2025 and still in progress. These include, at the Santa Giulia Museum, Guido Crepax. Dreams, Games, Valentina. 1953-2003, Worlds, Travels, Stories... and then there’s Jacovitti! Illustrations from the Archives of Editrice LaScuola and Material for an Exhibition, while in Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo continue Matthias Stom. A Caravaggesque in the Lombard Collections and Pieter Paul Rubens. Portrait of Giovan Carlo Doria on Horseback. At the Museo del Risorgimento Leonessa d’Italia, L’abito di Anita Garibaldi and Elogio della diversità remain on view . Journey in Italian Ecosystems, while at Brixia.Bresciaromana Archaeological Park, Victoria Mater continues. Francesco Vezzoli’s Idol and Icon.

The year 2026 will be marked by the Bicentennial of the discovery of the Winged Victory. The anniversary celebrates the discovery in 1826 of the bronze deposit in Brescia’s Capitolium, where the statue and numerous bronzes from the imperial age were found. The celebrations, which began with Victoria Mater and the Icons of Power and Beauty in Florence project, will culminate on July 20, 2026. On that occasion, the exhibition The Victory of Brescia will be inaugurated. 40 photographers and an eternal beauty, curated by Giovanna Calvenzi, with works by photographers such as Gianni Berengo Gardin, Francesco Cito, Bonomo Faita and Ferdinando Scianna, who reinterpret the city symbol. In October the major exhibition We Are the Strength of the Past will open. 1826-2026: 200 Years, 200 Stories, dedicated to the two hundred years of Brescia’s civic collections, based on works from the repositories and collecting histories that tell the city’s identity.

The program also includes educational and in-depth activities: from March 13 to May 18 there will be an archaeology course The Brescia Bronze Depot: intertwining identities, curated by Aurora Raimondi Cominesi. Six lectures by art historians and archaeologists will delve into the 200th anniversary of the Winged Victory, analyzing the role of archaeological finds, imperial portraits and the cultural memory of the community, with a focus on the Flavian lady. Among major international exhibitions, March will see the arrival in Brescia of Bruce Gilden with the exhibition project A closer look at the Museo di Santa Giulia and the site-specific installation Grace / Grazia. Bruce Gilden for Raphael at the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, in collaboration with Magnum Photos and the Brescia Photo Festival. In June, the Archaeological Stages project will continue with an installation by Franca Ghitti, curated by Fausto Lorenzi and Elena Pontiggia, which will present a representative nucleus of the Brescian artist’s work, dialoguing with the city’s archaeological and museum heritage. On the occasion of the bicentenary of Giuseppe Zanardelli, Palazzo Tosio will host an exhibition dedicated to the statesman, organized in collaboration with the Municipality, Ateneo di Brescia and Fondazione Ugo da Como, accompanied by a catalog and a guidebook on the places linked to the figure of Zanardelli.

The year 2026 will also be a year of new additions to the museum collections: in spring the medieval seal of Brescia and Francesco Vezzoli ’s Nike Metafisica will be placed permanently at the Santa Giulia Museum, enriching the itinerary that includes works by Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Isgrò, Ariel Schlesinger and Orlando ValerioRocco. The permanent installation of two works by Romanino at Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo and a selection of watercolors by Giuseppe Nodari and the National Guard uniform by Niccolò Panciera di Zoppola at the Museo del Risorgimento will be completed in the fall. Also in 2026, the digital catalog of the Civic Museums will be published online, with 1,000 freely searchable initial cards, to facilitate knowledge of the collections. Museum storytelling will be enriched with Il ParlaTosio, a new format of public meetings at Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo dedicated to exhibitions, artists and publications, with appointments on Filippo Buonarroti, the Grand Tour, Giovanni Morelli and Gustavo Frizzoni, and projects related to the memory of the Ten Days of Brescia.

Cultural offerings extend to different audiences with the Museo per Tutti program, which offers inclusive visits and experiential activities such as L’aroma nell’arte with perfumer Antonio Gardoni and the cycle Le cinque porte. New Museum Experiences, focused on sensory pathways. The Nuovo Eden cinema maintains its extensive programming with L’Eden for All and the La Nueva Ola - Spanish and Latin American Film Festival dedicated to Spanish cinema. Finally, the Brescia Castle confirms its role as an active space with We Love Castello and Mysteria Light Festival, enhancing museums, dining and light art installations, as well as completing accessible signage for the Cidneo route, in collaboration with FAI, Intesa Sanpaolo and local associations.

Statements

“The 2026 cultural season proposed by Fondazione Brescia Musei,” says Laura Castelletti, Mayor of Brescia, “tells with depth and passion what Brescia has been and continues to be: a city that recognizes in the memory of its roots an engine for the future. The focus on the Winged Victory, two hundred years after its discovery, is not only a celebration of a unique symbolic masterpiece, but an opportunity to reread our deep identity considering the link with our vast and precious archaeological heritage. Similarly, the path dedicated to Giuseppe Zanardelli invites us to rediscover a figure who was able to combine thought, politics and sense of institutions, leaving a lasting mark on the history of Brescia and Italy. Bringing these two great references for Brescia, Winged Victory and Zanardelli, into dialogue means remembering how memory is never static, but lives on in storytelling, sharing and the ability to speak to the present. This is the deepest value of programming that puts museums at the center as places of encounter, awareness and shared future.”

“The 2026 program of Fondazione Brescia Musei is based on the principle of innovation in continuity,” says Francesca Bazoli, president of Fondazione Brescia Musei. “The continuity is manifested first of all in the project of re-functionalization of the Roman Theater, which in 2026 will know a further and decisive impulse. Initiated by the Foundation starting in 2022, the project has been able to generate a significant convergence of intentions among the main Brescian institutions - from the Superintendence to the Municipality of Brescia, up to Fondazione Cariplo, through Fondazione della Comunità Bresciana - with the shared goal of the definitive recovery of the extraordinary compendium that is the Roman Theater.Instead, innovation is expressed in the ability to reread and narrate cultural heritage in new and participatory forms. On the occasion of the bicentennial celebrations of the discovery of archaeological bronzes, starting with the Winged Victory, and the birth of city archaeology two hundred years ago, Fondazione Brescia Musei intends to propose an unprecedented narrative of the value of cultural heritage, inscribing it in the grand narrative of these two centuries that coincide with the very history of the prestigious museums now managed by the Foundation according to the inspiring principles of the Faro Convention.A program made of major events, but also of a daily and patient mending of the deep ties that the community of the civitas bresciana has with its own history and culture. It is a role that the Foundation has consistently played over the years, serving as a symbolic ’torchbearer’ of a fire that illuminates and warms the city of Brescia on its path of transformation into a city of culture, of which we have been and will continue to be a relevant part.”

“The year 2026 offers great events and heritage care, under the auspices of the Winged Victory and the Roman Theater,” says Stefano Karadjov, director of Fondazione Brescia Musei. “A great schedule dedicated to the Bicentennial of the discovery of the bronzes and the 200th anniversary of the Brescia museums with two exhibitions and dozens of events. The two major original exhibitions of the Bruce Gilden project, the great photography revealing the contradictions and anxieties of the US. The revival of Archaeological Stages with site-specific Franca Ghitti at the Santa Giulia Museum. Outdoor cinema all summer, Castello and Nuovo Eden cinema year-round. Dozens of cultural events already scheduled for the continued animation of the city. To knead it all together, 2026 is the year of the new Roman Theater of Brescia, which Fondazione will follow and nurture in a game of buttonhole and button, so that the spirit of the Brescia Musei statute is reaffirmed not only as an established animator of the scientific-cultural proposal of Brescia’s museums but also as the prime mover of the enrichment and rejuvenation of the civic heritage.”

Brescia Musei Foundation: presented the exhibition program 2026

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