Time for Women! Empowering Visions in 20 Years of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women

Palazzo Strozzi and Collezione Maramotti present a special exhibition at the Strozzina of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.

From April 17 to August 31, 2025, Palazzo Strozzi and Collezione Maramotti present Time for Women! Empowering Visions in 20 Years of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. This special exhibition celebrates, in the spaces of the Strozzina at Palazzo Strozzi, the twentieth anniversary of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women—one of the most important awards supporting women-identified artists – and the long collaboration between Max Mara, Whitechapel Gallery and Collezione Maramotti, through the works of the nine artists who have won the award since 2005.

The show will feature: Margaret Salmon, Hannah Rickards, Andrea Büttner, Laure Prouvost, Corin Sworn, Emma Hart, Helen Cammock, Emma Talbot and Dominique White.

Organized by Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and Collezione Maramotti, Time for Women! Empowering Visions will unfold through the fascinating spaces of the Strozzina, paying homage to two decades of female creativity and innovation and plunging visitors into a range of different media and artistic visions.

For the first time in one place, the exhibition presents the projects that the nine artists developed during the long Italian residency that is at the heart of the prize. With videos, installations, sculptures, and wall pieces, the exhibition is a journey thorough the award’s twenty-years history of the prize and the work of figures who were just emerging at the time they were selected, but have gone on to become renowned names on the broader international art scene. Starting with broader themes such as identity, memory, the body, society, and politics, each of these artists zeroed in on specific aspects connected to her research and experiences in Italy: commedia dell’arte, motherhood, the contemporary idea of the Grand Tour, artisan traditions, mythology, monastic communities, the natural landscape, or history, all the way to the recovery of forgotten voices and narratives from ancient times and up to the present.

The Max Mara Art Prize for Women is a biennial prize for women-identified artists, founded in 2005 by the Max Mara Fashion Group and organized in partnership with Whitechapel Gallery. Collezione Maramotti came on board as the third partner in 2007. It was the first visual arts award for emerging women artists based in the UK, aimed at supporting and promoting their work at a crucial stage in their career by offering the time and space to create an ambitious new project. Selected by an all-female jury of leading female figures from the British art world, the winners were awarded a six-month residency in Italy, organized by Collezione Maramotti and tailored to their professional and personal needs. During their stay, the artists immersed themselves in the general context of the country; they investigated specific cultural and historical topics, cultivated new technical skills and created new works that became part of the final two-stage exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery in London and Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, which acquired works from all the winning projects over the years. In recognition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women’s unique and outstanding support for the creative process, it was singled out for the British Council Arts & Business International Award in 2007.

The exhibition is organized by Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and Collezione Maramotti. / Mainsupporter: Max Mara. / Special thanks to Whitechapel Gallery, London.