10 must-see exhibitions and events in Italy in January

Everyone knows that January is a hybrid month, which passes slowly day after day between the desire to enjoy the last few days of vacation and the need to find the strength to face the restart.

As soon as you take a step forward, leaving the liveliness of the holidays behind you, you can admire the lightness of summer in the distance, looking closer for a way to pamper yourself and start the new year in the best possible way.

What vitamin can be more effective than art to charge the mind and spirit?

Experiences to live alone or with the people we love, exhibitions and events are always excellent opportunities to mix fun with moments of reflection and enrichment.

But if the offer proposed by museums, foundations and galleries seems too dense and attractive to be able to make a selection, we'll take care of it! Within the main cultural segments, we have identified for you 10 must-see exhibitions and events, still scheduled in Italy until the end of January 2023.

All you have to do is choose!

It is the title of one of the most famous works by Andy Warhol, created in response to the earthquake that struck Irpinia in 1980. And, although the feeling of urgency is decidedly reduced, the exhibition Andy Warhol. Icona Pop deserves a "hurried note" in order not to risk missing out on the 150 works – including serigraphs, drawings, sculptures and postcards – shown until January 29th in Padua.

On the other hand, the time to visit the Paul Klee exhibition in the Helf Collection in Lugano is much shorter. Scheduled until the 8th of January, for the first time it open to the public a rich heritage of drawings made available by the two collectors and representative of a less-known artistic expression of the author, who ironically combines the graphic symbol of the line and the semantic one of the word.

This exhibition was conceived to celebrate a relationship: the one between the artist and the Christian Stein Gallery, with which he has long collaborated and which for the occasion is exhibiting an unprecedented installation until 21 January, strongly interactive in its ability to stimulate the senses. 

In this case, too, a relationship is somehow celebrated. The Rubens exhibition in Genoa pays homage to the painter's relationship with the city and also sees numerous works commissioned from him at the time by prominent Genoese people returning to the Ligurian capital - at least until 22 January.

On the other hand, the retrospective We Don't Find The Pieces They Find Themselves celebrates the relationship between memory and innovation at the MIC in Faenza until the 8th of January. Imagined by the author Salvatore Arancio as a way to enhance the ceramic material, through the video and the sculptural tools it gives voice and shape to unexplored sections of the museum.

A plurality exalted also in the latest edition of BAM - Mediterranean Archipelago Biennale, an international festival hosted this year by the city of Palermo until the January 22. With the title INSTAURO, the Sicilian edition brings together personalities from the performing, visual and theater arts to think about the topics of hospitality and dialogue.

10 years after his death, a traveling exhibition-event stops in Rome until January 6 to remember the artist and the man through his music, but also in a more intimate way thanks to the presence of symbolic objects of his daily life. After Bologna and the capital, in 2023 the exhibition will stop in Pesaro, Milan and Naples.

And the Neapolitan city is hosting the retrospective David Bowie – The Passenger by Andrew Kent until the 29th of January, where the focus on the European tour undertaken in the mid-1970s is maintained thanks to the presence of Kent's shots, together with memories from private collections for a total of 150 exhibited works.

We close with exhibitions and events dedicated to photography. A heterogeneous and rich offer, in which 2 monographic exhibitions scheduled in Milan and Cuneo stand out.

Until January 29, in the shadow of the Madonnina it is possible to admire the shots of the master Richard Avedon, many of which portray international celebrities, impossible to forget.

Also closing on the 29th January the one in Cuneo where, borrowing works by Steve McCurry, the Filatoio di Caraglio investigates the relationship between man and appearance, and in doing so, it opens to the public many unpublished works by the famous artist.