Nights: Five Centuries of Stars, Dreams, Plenilunes

Curated by Fabio Cafagna and Elena Volpato, the exhibition presents around one hundred works from major European institutions and the GAM collections. It explores the night as a space of technical experimentation, scientific reflection, and poetic introspection, spanning from the early seventeenth century to the present day. Organised thematically yet following a chronological thread, the exhibition invites reflection on the nocturnal as a realm of ambiguity, mystery, and discovery, where rationality and emotion, science and imagination intertwine.

The journey begins with seventeenth-century studies by Galileo and Maria Clara Eimmart, in dialogue with works by Johann Carl Loth, Giuseppe Antonio Petrini, and Antonio Canova, and continues to contemporary cosmic visions by Vija Celmins and Thomas Ruff. The Romantic and Symbolist nineteenth century and the dreamlike twentieth century are given wide attention, with works where night becomes a site of transcendence and imagination — the nocturnes of Victor Hugo, Odilon Redon, Franz von Stuck, František Kupka, Marc Chagall, Jackson Pollock, and Joseph Cornell illuminating a continuous fascination with darkness as a generator of vision and thought.