February 6, 2025

The must-see exhibitions in Florence

All the must-see events

All the must-see art events in Florence:

Impressionisti in Normandia al Museo degli Innocenti (until 4 May 2025)

Impressionists in Normandy is the exhibition with which the Museo degli Innocenti celebrates this anniversary, through a unique narrative that opens with an exceptional loan from the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome: Claude Monet's Pink Water Lilies. Alongside the Water Lilies, over 70 works tell the story of the Impressionist current from its beginnings so closely linked to Normandy, a land that - for its landscapes, light and colours - became a point of reference for numerous artists, a true laboratory in which to experiment with the suggestions and forms of a new painting. Painters such as Monet, Renoir, Delacroix and Courbet - on show along with many others - captured the immediacy and vitality of the Normandy landscape, imprinting on canvas the moods of the sky, the sparkle of the water and the verdant valleys of that stage of rare beauty that became, not by chance, the cradle of Impressionism.

La Sala Grande. Giorgio Vasari per Cosimo I de' Medici (until March the 9th 2025)

In the setting of Palazzo Vecchio, until March 9th, the exhibition La Sala Grande. Giorgio Vasari for Cosimo I de' Medici is on display, celebrating the historical and artistic grandeur of the Sala Grande on the anniversary of the deaths of Cosimo I de' Medici and Giorgio Vasari. The exhibition, set up in the Sala Grande - today better known as the Salone dei Cinquecento—tells the story of the room's renovation through letters, preparatory sketches, and unique testimonies. Additionally, the exhibition features works of artistic craftsmanship by master Paolo Penko and a video production by Art Media Studio that connects the displayed works to the frescoes of the room.

AN/ARCHIVE EVENT TWO: blue r/evolution at Manifattura Campus of Polimoda (fino al 15 febbraio)

An innovative exhibition exploring the cultural, social and anthropological evolution of denim and the colour blue. Open to the public until 15 February at Polimoda's Manifattura Campus, this edition investigates the transformative power of workwear and denim, interweaving historical memory, artistic innovation and future vision. Indigo blue, more than just a colour, has deep symbolic and cultural significance. blue r/evolution is more than an exhibition, it is a cultural dialogue. Combining historical archives, art installations, photographs and garments, the event invites the public to reflect on the relationship between clothing, personal identity and the social transformations of our time. The exhibition celebrates the cultural evolution of blue and denim. Admission free Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Retroscena. Storie di resistenza e dissidenza nella collezione della ragione at Museo del Novecento (until April 2)

About eighty years after our country's struggle for liberation from Nazi-Fascism, the Museo Novecento is questioning the presence, in the Alberto Della Ragione Collection, of evidence regarding the relationship between artists and the historical events in which they participated between the 1920s and 1940s. The fulcrum of the exhibition is the works of masters who lived through, suffered or opposed the policies of fascism, going through the dark and terrible days of war and racial laws, those of cultural persecution, and finally the civil war. Artists who were loved by Della Ragione, a sensitive collector of an art compromised with the adventures of existence, with the pain and evil of living, drawn into the uprisings of resistance and rebellion to the darkest destiny of man and societies. Some of them, Mario Mafai, Antonietta Raphaël, Renato Guttuso, were even housed in the engineer's villa near Genoa to escape the persecution of the regime. The selected works make it possible not only to investigate the choices made by the naval engineer, who established intense human as well as professional relationships with many of the artists exhibited here, but also to question the work of these protagonists of Italian art in one of the darkest seasons of our recent history.

Forme della Natura. Fotografie di Marcello Fara 2020-2021 (fino al 7 marzo)

Dall’arrivo in nave dove l’isola si materializza in mezzo al mare fra la nebbia alle geometrie del paesaggio marino che cerca un equilibrio con l’intervento umano. Il mare della Sardegna è protagonista di un viaggio degli occhi e del sentimento condotto dall’artista Marcello Fara nella sua terra natale. Dal 7 febbraio al 7 marzo, a Villa Bardini, la mostra fotografica Forme della Natura. Fotografie di Marcello Fara 2020-2021, a cura di Carlo Sisi.