A packed programme despite dwindling funds for producers. What will the expensive Mudec do?

Kiefer’s *Alchimiste* is being taken down from the Sala delle Cariatidi at Palazzo Reale, and hopes are high for new, successful collaborations in the exhibition season that has just begun. It is difficult to make predictions: as several exhibition producers based in Milan have confirmed to *Il Foglio*, this is not the best of times. Exhibitions are a complex business, with production costs rising exponentially whilst the public’s spending power is clearly dwindling. In this regard, Kiefer’s project is an interesting case: produced by Marsilio Arte (with the support of two ‘heavyweight’ galleries such as Gagosian and Lia Rumma), it was a ‘long-form’ exhibition (it opened on 7 February and closed, following an extension, last Sunday) which attracted over 150,000 paying visitors. This is an excellent figure for contemporary art, impressive compared to the average attendance at more traditional exhibitions at Palazzo Reale (70–80,000 visitors), but a far cry from the 275,000 visitors to the blockbuster exhibition on Munch in 2024–25 (produced by Arthemisia).

Amidst a flurry of openings that have been taking place in recent weeks, Palazzo Reale reaffirms its status as the centrepiece of Palazzo Marino’s exhibition programme (the final one organised by the Sala administration). The organisers have opted to play it safe with ‘Dalí and Fashion’, aptly inaugurated by Anna Wintour during Milan Fashion Week, complete with a much-photographed gala dinner in the palace courtyard: two hundred works, including paintings, drawings, videos, garments, sculptures, objects and photographs by and about Salvador Dalí, explored not so much as an artist but as a surrealist figure, so obsessive about self-representation that today’s influencers seem utterly clueless by comparison. It took a co-production between MondoMostre and Civita Mostre e Musei, and collaboration with the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, to bring to fruition a project ‘blessed’ by the Italian Chamber of Fashion, it’s a shame that some pieces that have made history are missing, such as the ‘Lobster Dress’ designed by Dalí for Elsa Schiaparelli (all the fashion house’s iconic dresses are on display until 15 November at the V&A Museum in London: ubi maior…).

Ahead of next week’s opening of the largest exhibition ever staged in Italy on Francis Picabia – an unconventional and elusive figure straddling Impressionism, Cubism and Dadaism (with the evocative title: “Picabia. Opening the Doors of the Night”, produced by Madeinart – whose last exhibition at Palazzo Reale was on Max Ernst in 2022) – the other ‘big’ autumn exhibition is already open to the public. ‘The Brueghels. The Origins of Pictorial Genres in Europe’, curated by Bernard Aikema, features a classic exhibition layout (though with a few minor flaws in the colour scheme of the exhibition captions: the white font, which is too thin against a blue background, makes reading difficult, but we are told this will soon be rectified). It adopts a sociological approach: on the whole, it features not many works (around eighty) and not many by the famous Brueghels, but it tells the story of how this Flemish dynasty managed to transform itself into what we would today call a brand, reinventing genre painting with teeming scenes of peasants and ‘proverbial’ situations in which vices and virtues are captured on canvas. A figurative revolution, that of the Brueghels, simple only in appearance; in fact, the intended audience for their much-copied paintings were the wealthy, the only ones capable of deciphering their allegorical meanings: it is therefore an excellent idea to provide maps that help us, today, to understand the paintings and the intricate family connections.

The Brueghel exhibition is organised by 24 Ore Cultura, which next week will also present the final exhibition at ‘its’ Mudec in Via Tortona: for the grand finale (marking 12 years as concessionaire and private partner of the museum, which remains the property of the City Council), a major exhibition on Matisse is being staged, and people are already wondering what the Gruppo 24 Ore company will focus on from next March onwards, and above all, which of the exhibition producers ‘in the Milanese circle’ will have the audacity to take its place (in other words: to shoulder the museum’s onerous running costs, and to design exhibitions in spaces smaller than in the past, as more space will be allocated to the permanent ethnographic collection). The call for tenders for the new concession, drawn up by the City Council, closed on Monday and received no bids: the news came as no surprise to those in the know. A second call for tenders will be issued soon (time is running out).