NIGHTS. FIVE CENTURIES OF STARS, DREAMS, PLENILUNES

Curated by Fabio Cafagna and Elena Volpato

29 October 2025 – 1° March 2026

Curated by Fabio Cafagna and Elena Volpato, the exhibition features approximately one hundred works from prestigious European institutions and from the collections of GAM.

The exhibition explores the night as a space for technical experimentation, scientific reflection and poetic introspection, from the early seventeenth-century to the contemporary era.

Organized thematically, and following a main path that follows the chronological flow of different cultural periods, the exhibition encourages reflection on the allure of the nocturnal as a place of ambiguity, mystery and discovery, in a constant dialogue between rationality and sentiment, science and visionary.

From the seventeenth-century science of Galileo and Maria Clara Eimmart, in dialogue with works by Johann Carl Loth, Giuseppe Antonio Petrini and Antonio Canova, till the contemporary cosmic visions of Vija Celmins and Thomas Ruff.

Considerable attention is devoted to the Romantic and Symbolist nineteenth century and the dreamlike twentieth century, whose works are presented where night is woven into transcendent visions and imaginations, such as the nocturnes of Victor Hugo, Odilon Redon, Franz von Stuck, František Kupka, Marc Chagall, Jackson Pollock, and Joseph Cornell.