It’s Milan Art Week, and the city is once again in full cultural overdrive. Alongside the major fairs—miart and Paris Internationale Milano—a dense programme of exhibitions unfolds across institutions, foundations and alternative spaces.
From immersive installations and monumental painting to politically charged sound works and deeply personal reflections on identity, this year’s line-up captures a city thinking across time, technology and memory. Here are five exhibitions to catch while you’re in Milan.
1 Cao Fei: Dash, 9th Apr — 28th Sep 2026, Fondazione Prada
Fondazione Prada presents Dash, a new multimedia project by Cao Fei. Developed in close collaboration with the foundation, the project draws on three years of research across farmlands in southern and northwestern China and Southeast Asia. Working across photography, video installation, virtual reality, documentary and archival material, Cao Fei constructs a layered portrait of the global shift toward smart agriculture.
Set against the pressures of climate change, resource scarcity and rural depopulation, Dash examines how technological systems are transforming agriculture—enhancing efficiency while simultaneously reshaping labour, knowledge and the relationship between humans and the land.
“This exhibition invites viewers to step into a contemporary agricultural archaeological site, where multiple temporal dimensions intertwine. It is not a pastoral idyll of technology, but an archaeological gaze upon ‘agriculture as geological engineering.’ Here, satellite positioning systems converse with ritual geographies; artificial intelligence and traditional experience train one another; historical images and sensor signals generate visual resonance. Together, these objects and images form a chronicle of technological artifacts— at once tools of production and carriers of time—continually reconfiguring the biopolitics of the land across the vast gradients of human history.”
Cao Fei
2 Anselm Kiefer: Le Alchimiste, 7th Feb — 27th Sep 2026, Palazzo Reale
Anselm Kiefer’s Le Alchimiste is a monumental, site-specific exhibition that pays tribute to forgotten women alchemists. Presented as part of the cultural programming for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games, the immersive presentation invites visitors to engage with works that reflect on history, painting, and female memory through forty-two large-scale canvases. Here, Kiefer gives voice to several female alchemists who have been largely forgotten by official history, bringing to light what has been buried: faces and bodies emerging from his canvases like apparitions, revealing a world of female intelligence that was persecuted and concealed, yet was essential to the birth of modern scientific thought. @palazzorealemilano
3 Rirkrit Tiravanija: The House That Jack Built, 26th Mar — 26th Jul 2026, Pirelli Hangar Bicocca
Curated by Lucia Aspesi and Vicente Todolí, “The House that Jack Built” is the first retrospective dedicated to Rirkrit Tiravanija’s architectural and spatial research. Tiravanija is a leading figure in relational art and one of the most significant contemporary artists on the international art scene. His work exists between art and life, and calls for participation. In the Navate space of Pirelli HangarBicocca, visitors will navigate a gigantic maze, where every encounter becomes an opportunity to share experiences of leisure, rest, care, conviviality, and participation. @rirkrit_team / @pirelli_hangarbicocca
4 Marco Fusinato: The Only True Anarchy is That of Power, 31st Mar — 7th Jun 2026, PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea
PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea presents THE ONLY TRUE ANARCHY IS THAT OF POWER- Marco Fusinato returns to Italy after representing Australia at the 59th Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Biennale in Venice with his first European monographic exhibition, which brings together some of his most significant works from recent years. The exhibition features a collection of works in which visual art and noise music merge, giving rise to installations with a strong visual impact and sensory engagement. For the occasion, Desastres, the impressive performance piece presented at the Venice Biennale in 2022, will be reprised: an immersive experience in which images and sounds merge to create a total audiovisual landscape. @marcofusinatostudio / @pacmilano
5 Shifting Crossroads. Beirut Contemporary, Mar — 3rd Jul 2026, Saikalis Bay Foundation’s headquarters, Circolo
‘Shifting Crossroads’ celebrates Beirut as a site of great cultural dialogue and exchange, through the centuries and into the present day. Works by contemporary artists of Lebanese heritage explore how personal and collective cultural identity, memory and geography all exist in a state of constant shift, born from the complex overlapping that characterised Beirut’s urban fabric.
The exhibition presents works across different media, from artworks on paper and banners, to ceramic and porcelain sculptures, as well as photography and video, bringing together the layered and intimate practices of Catherine Cattaruzza, Simone Fattal, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Mona Hatoum, Lamia Joreige, Omar Mismar, Rabih Mroué, Stéphanie Saadé, Soraya Salwan Hammoud, and Akram Zaatari. @circolo.art / @saikalis_bay_foundation
