Rome 00198
Italy
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MACRO–Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome opens its autumn season on September 24 with a programme that continues the research initiated in 2026 by artistic director Cristiana Perrella. Photography, moving image, and sound become tools for observing the present and examining the ways in which identity, memory, and shared space are constructed.
At the centre of the new season is Sguardo rovescio, the first major Italian museum exhibition dedicated to Marialba Russo, curated by Cristiana Perrella and Elena Magini, on view from September 24, 2026. Russo belongs to a generation of women artists who contributed to redefining photographic language in Italy through practices spanning social observation, anthropological research, and artistic experimentation.
The exhibition focuses on Russo’s work from the 1970s, bringing together seven key bodies of work, including Al ristorante, il 29 settembre 1974, Travestimento, Il Passaggio, Il Parto, Della serie delle centotrenta figure di spalle, l’Espulsione del male, and Cult Fiction. Through images of bodies, rituals and forms of representation, Russo challenges the conventions of a patriarchal Italy. The title Sguardo rovescio refers to this shift in perspective: a way of looking that unsettles established viewpoints and questions the cultural construction of gender, masculinity, and identity.
The project extends to the MUCIV–Museum of Civilizations, where Immagini della Madonna dell’Arco (After), curated by Cristiana Perrella, Elena Magini, Andrea Viliani, and Francesca Romana Uccella, explores the anthropological dimension of Russo’s practice. The exhibition at MUCIV focuses on the fieldwork carried out by the artist in 1971 and her subsequent collaboration, from 1972 to 1977, with the former Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions, as part of research campaigns on Italian popular and subaltern cultures coordinated by anthropologist Annabella Rossi.
The season also expands the museum’s programme dedicated to moving image and sound. The Video Room will present Maria’s Dream by Gaia De Megni, curated by Maria Lodovica Ferrari. Produced by Careof and winner of ArteVisione 2024, the 16mm video intertwines family memory and cinematic imagery through the figure of Monica Vitti, critically examining the models through which cinema has constructed representations of femininity.
The Audio Room, 52 Spaces by Robin Rimbaud (Scanner), also curated by Maria Lodovica Ferrari, draws on Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse (1962). Created in 2002 the album combines dialogue, ambiental sound, musical fragments, and urban soundscapes from the film with environmental recordings made by the artist throughout Rome.
Connected through the figure of Monica Vitti and the cinema of Antonioni, the two projects approach Rome through distinct artistic languages, presenting it as an interior landscape shaped by memory, anticipation, and return.
In December, MACRO’s architecture itself becomes part of the artistic research with a project bringing together Francis Upritchard and Martino Gamper curated by Cristiana Perrella. Upritchard’s sculptures and Gamper’s spatial design intervene in MACRO’s in-between spaces turning the museum into a living space for encounter and collective use.
Also in December, the 2026 exhibition season closes with the first museum retrospective dedicated to Alessandro Sciarroni and his twenty-year practice in the performing arts. Curated by Cristiana Perrella and Elena Magini, the exhibition will feature an installation by Fosbury Architecture and a non-linear journey through Sciarroni’s work. It will include a new production, a performance work conceived for the camera, and a weekly cycle of live events co-curated by Alessandro Sciarroni and Lisa Gilardino.
The exhibition programme is accompanied by MACROCOSMO, MACRO’s public programme, structured across #talk, #live, #screen and #forum the programme connects artists, scholars, musicians, and other voices from contemporary culture, extending the museum’s research across different languages and disciplines.
The programme is promoted by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, produced and organised by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo. Conceived by artistic director Cristiana Perrella, it positions MACRO as a dynamic institution in which exhibitions and public programming operate in close dialogue.
