The must-see exhibitions and events in October

Trento: "Odyssey into the future"
Since time immemorial, the artistic and literary universe of sci-fi has described many possible futures—be they utopian or dystopian,—often surprising us with insights that have been confirmed by reality. Artists and writers have imagined worlds far away in time and space. They have often reinterpreted past events and offered new keys to interpret the present. Odyssey into the future is a MUSE Agorà project that invites you to explore science fiction themes through novels, films, comics, games and videogames, art and multimedia works, and to reflect on the possible evolution of our society.

When: until November 10
Where: MUSE, Trento Science Museum




Turin: “MOVIE ICONS. Objects from Hollywood sets”
One hundred and twenty original props, costumes and memorabilia from Hollywood film sets are the protagonists of the exhibition: from Forrest Gump's feather to Harry Potter's magic wand, from the Stormtrooper helmet from Star Wars to the bullet from Matrix.
The exhibition is a journey through film genres through iconic objects accompanied by posters and advertising materials from the Museum's collection. The pieces on display come from the collections of the National Museum of Cinema, Theatrum Mundi and Propstore. The exhibition is made accessible thanks to an introductory LIS video, 8 panels along the exhibition route, with a selection of 21 props made in visual-tactile representations (in transparent relief), complete with Braille captions, audio descriptions in Italian and English and easy reading fonts with high legibility.

When: until January 13, 2025
Where: National Museum of Cinema, at the Mole Antonelliana




Pisa: "MICROmacro"
The Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa hosts the temporary exhibition MICROmacro. The photographic exhibition, curated by Gabriele Cananzi, a PhD student at the Department of Biology at the University of Pisa, explores the biodiversity of the Serchio River through unique images of macroinvertebrates taken under a microscope. Rivers are the ecosystems on which we depend most and today, unfortunately, among the most threatened globally. Human impact, from dams to pollution, has repercussions that we can better understand thanks to the small protagonists of the exhibition: macroinvertebrates. Visible to the naked eye, they work at every link in the river food chain and are true bioindicators, or organisms capable of telling us, through their presence and number, about the ecological quality of the environment. Rivers tell us stories, and teach us that what happens upstream has repercussions downstream.

When: until October 13
Where: Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa



Buck Ellison Untitled (Banister), 2023, archival pigment print, courtesy of the artist and Barbati Gallery, Venezia - ph.Marco Cappelletti Studio

Rome: “Post Scriptum. A museum forgotten by heart”
“Forgetting by heart” is an expression coined in the late 1960s by Vincenzo Agnetti (1926-1981). The title of the exhibition borrows it to suggest the approach to the results of a project that in five years has led the museum institution to question its own identity, its methods of production and relationship with artists and the public. The museum is reflected in an exhibition, spread throughout its architecture, in a surface area of ​​over 10,000 square meters, with the works of 37 Italian and international artists, with prominent names both hyper contemporary and already historicized and internationally recognized - such as Luciano Fabro or Felix Gonzalez-Torrres. The exhibition does not follow a linear narrative, but rather creates an open ending, made of unexpected associations, different languages, and new ideas – or rarely seen in Italy – compared to the tradition of institutional critique, metabolizing them and returning them to the museum as a living and evolving entity.

When: from October 4 to February 16, 2025
Where: MACRO, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma


Furla Series, Kelly Akashi. Converging Figures, 2024. Installation view of the exhibition promoted by Fondazione Furla and GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan - ph. Andrea Rossetti, courtesy Fondazione Furla

Milan: “KELLY AKASHI. Converging Figures”
For the sixth edition of the Furla Series program, Fondazione Furla and GAM - Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Milano present the first solo exhibition dedicated to the artist Kelly Akashi by an Italian institution, conceived with a series of new productions that dialogue with the spaces and the collection of the museum. Kelly Akashi is an American artist, born and raised in Los Angeles by a family of Japanese origins and her works explore universal concepts such as time and entropy, the impermanence of the natural world and the transience of the human body. Attracted to materials such as wax, bronze and glass, Akashi shapes them creating forms that reproduce natural elements such as plants, flowers, shells or parts of her body, recording their physiological changes and therefore the passage of time. Juxtaposed in poetic compositions with an often fragile and precious appearance, these forms, familiar and alienating at the same time, address existential themes, encouraging us to look at things from a different, broader and less anthropocentric perspective.

When: until December 8
Where: GAM - Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Milano




Udine: “Third Earth”
The exhibition brings to Villa Manin some of the most important works by Michelangelo Pistoletto, one of the most famous Italian artists, including Mirror Paintings, Venus of the Rags, Sphere of Newspapers, and the Cubic Meter of Infinity, which will enter into dialogue with the creations of artists from the region, Italy and abroad, invited to engage through their work with the instances of ethical and social transformation typical of Pistoletto’s practice. Therefore, Pistoletto’s works themselves exhibited at Villa Manin will dictate the themes of comparison and debate: society, fashion, politics, education, food and agriculture. One of the strengths of the path proposed by Villa Manin is the Third Paradise, a symbol conceived by Pistoletto to express the balanced intertwining of artifice and nature, which was created in the park of Villa Manin in botanical form, on a large scale (50 meters), and also represents the starting point for addressing the issues of agricultural production and food sustainability. A creation “in progress”, which will be made to grow also thanks to the use of a special vegetable carbon that increases the fertility of the soil, Biochar. The exhibition is accompanied by a program of meetings called “Art of Demopraxy”, which involves the involvement of public and private organizations, exponents of the productive and agricultural world, representatives of institutions and culture.

When: until December 31
Where: Villa Manin