“Cara città (abbracciami)”: reopening programme dedicated to Rome

On December 12, 2025, MACRO—Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome—reopens to the public with a renewed institutional vision under the artistic direction of Cristiana Perrella. The museum returns as a polyphonic organism, responsive to the rhythms and contradictions of the city it inhabits, and committed to producing forms of knowledge that extend beyond exhibition-making. The inaugural season, unfolding through April 2026, is conceived as a tribute to Rome’s ever-shifting cultural landscape—a living, decentralised ecosystem in which artistic, sonic, cinematic and urban practices intersect and mutually condition one another. 

Rather than positioning Rome as a static backdrop, the programme treats the city as an active agent: a site of continuous reinvention shaped by bottom-up energies, by informal networks, by emerging voices and by practices that exceed the conventional perimeter of contemporary art. The reopening becomes an opportunity to narrate Rome not only to itself but also outward, through the international networks MACRO seeks to activate in this new phase.

Four exhibitions open simultaneously, establishing a multidirectional narrative that spans decades, scales and registers. Together, they map a city in transition—its generative structures, its contradictions, and the imaginaries it produces.

UNAROMA, curated by Cristiana Perrella and former director Luca Lo Pinto, offers a large-scale snapshot of the hybrid and intergenerational art scene that animates the city today. Conceived as a cinematic tracking shot filmed through an “ideal green screen,” the exhibition situates more than seventy artists within a design by Parasite 2.0 that transforms MACRO into a porous, continuously evolving set. The project unfolds across three chapters. Set assembles a constellation of new and rarely seen works along a green axis that traverses the museum’s ground floor. Live expands this plane into a full spatial apparatus on the first floor, hosting weekly performances, concerts, conversations, workshops and screenings that leave material traces within the exhibition. Off extends UNAROMA citywide, activating a network of independent Roman spaces invited to produce autonomous yet interconnected interventions. UNAROMA thus becomes both exhibition and infrastructure—a collective film written through distributed authorship.

One Day You’ll Understand. 25 years from Dissonanze, curated by Perrella, revisits the seminal festival that, between 2000 and 2010, turned Rome into a hub for electronic music and digital experimentation. Through an extensive body of archival material—photographic, sonic, graphic—the exhibition rebuilds the aesthetics, architectures and socialities that Dissonanze generated across the urban fabric, from Pietralata to the Palazzo dei Congressi, from the Ara Pacis to the Cappa Mazzoniana. Installed in two historic rooms of MACRO, the project positions Dissonanze not as a nostalgic object but as a lens through which to reflect on the city’s capacity to host and metabolise experimental practices. A dedicated research day by Carlo Antonelli and Valerio Mannucci expands this reflection into a contemporary assembly with artists, curators and cultural practitioners.

With Jonathas de Andrade. Sisters With No Name, Perrella presents a new film commission by the Brazilian artist, developed with Conciliazione 5 and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film. Stemming from research at Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso, the work reconstructs the story of a group of Brazilian nuns who, in the 1960s, merged spirituality, political activism and social pedagogy, later relocating to Rome after facing persecution by the military dictatorship. Through archival materials and direct testimonies, de Andrade charts a transnational trajectory of resistance, situating these women within broader pedagogical and emancipatory movements, while weaving an implicit geography between Belo Horizonte and Rome.

Inhabiting the Ruins of the Present, curated by Giulia Fiocca and Lorenzo Romito (Stalker), reflects on Rome as a laboratory of grassroots regeneration. Part of the project presented at the 2025 Austrian Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale, the exhibition examines forms of inhabitation emerging from environmental and social precarity, foregrounding practices of reuse, re-naturalisation and shared governance. From Corviale to Lago Bullicante, from occupied spaces to community-led experiments, the exhibition articulates an alternative urban epistemology in which Rome’s “ruins” become active terrains of possibility. 

The reopening also inaugurates Cine-città, the museum’s new cinema programme, curated by Sergio Sozzo and Sara Pirone in collaboration with CSC–Cineteca Nazionale. Focusing on Rome’s contemporary film scene, the programme introduces works by emerging filmmakers each Friday, while Sunday screenings present cinematic portraits of the city selected by acclaimed Italian and international directors.

Across exhibitions, screenings and live events, MACRO reasserts its role as a civic and international platform—an experimental, inclusive space where the city’s cultural energies are not simply exhibited but activated, negotiated and transformed. Under Perrella’s direction, the museum enters a new chapter rooted in dialogue, mutual contamination and shared imagination.

The programme, promoted by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, produced and organised by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, has been conceived by the artistic director Cristiana Perrella, inaugurating her vision of a multifaceted, lively and receptive institution in which the exhibition calendar is accompanied by a daily programme that restores to MACRO its role as an open, accessible and culturally vital place.