Contemporary arts foundation Palazzo Strozzi has announced forthcoming shows and installations through Summer 2026.
Fra Angelico
From September 26 to January 25, 2026, Fra Angelico comes to Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco in an unprecedented exhibition devoted to an artist who symbolises 15th-century Florentine art and stands out as one of the greatest masters of Italian art of all time.
The exhibition, organized in collaboration between the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, the Ministero della Cultura – Direzione regionale Musei nazionali Toscana and Museo di San Marco in a close dialogue between cultural institutions and the region, explores Fra Angelico’s art, development and influence and his relation to painters such as Lorenzo Monaco, Masaccio and Filippo Lippi, as well as sculptors like Lorenzo Ghiberti, Michelozzo and Luca della Robbia. Curated by Carl Brandon Strehlke, curator emeritus of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with Angelo Tartuferi, former director of the Museo di San Marco, and Stefano Casciu, regional director of Musei Nazionali Toscana, Fra Angelico marks the first major exhibition in Florence dedicated to the artist, exactly 70 years after the monographic show of 1955.
Renowned for a style that evolved from a late Gothic legacy while embracing the principles of the emerging Renaissance, Fra Angelico (Guido di Piero, Fra Giovanni da Fiesole; Vicchio di Mugello c. 1395– Rome 1455) created paintings celebrated for their mastery of perspective and light, shaping an innovative relationship between figures and space. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to explore extraordinary artistic vision of this friar painter deeply rooted in religious devotion, centred on a reflection of the sacred in relation to the human.
The exhibition brings together more than 140 works of art across the two venues that include paintings, drawings, sculptures and illuminated manuscripts from the Louvre in Paris, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Vatican Museums, the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and numerous libraries, churches, and collections both in Italy and internationally.
The result of over four years of preparation, the project has enabled an undertaking of exceptional scholarly and cultural importance, thanks also to an extensive campaign of restorations and the singular opportunity to reunite altarpieces that were disassembled and dispersed over two hundred years ago.
KAWS
Brooklyn-based contemporary artist KAWS will be filling the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi with a site-specific installation, in tandem with the Beato Angelico exhibition. Running from October 29 to January 25, 2026, the project is set to provide an original and surprising encounter between different eras, forms and artistic visions in the Renaissance space.
Born in 1974 in Jersey City, KAWS has gained international acclaim with works ranging from painting and sculpture to street art and design, often inspired by the world of animation and contemporary visual communication. With a distinctive style and a playful yet subversive approach, the artist explores human themes and imagery through hybrid characters and shared symbols, questioning the boundaries between high and popular culture. He has held solo shows at museums such as SFMoMA, San Francisco (2025); The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2024); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2023); Serpentine Gallery, London (2022); Mori Arts Center Gallery, Tokyo (2021); The Brooklyn Museum, New York (2021); and The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2019).
Andro Eradze
From November 20 to January 25, 2026, Palazzo Strozzi, in collaboration with IED Firenze, presents Bones of Tomorrow, the first institutional solo exhibition in Italy by Georgian artist Andro Eradze. The project brings together a selection of videos, photographs and installations created specifically for two venues: the Project Space at Palazzo Strozzi and the former Teatro dell’Oriuolo, home of IED Firenze.
Conceived as a unified journey across the two spaces, the free-admission exhibition invites visitors to explore Eradze’s visual world, where time flows in multiple directions, the link between cause and effect disappears, and images are imbued with an enigmatic quality. Eradze’s artistic research is marked by the coexistence of opposing forces and the exploration of boundary zones where the natural and artificial, the domestic and wild, the human and animal intersect. His works exist in a liminal space where opposites do not cancel each other out, but remain in tension, creating a constant sense of anticipation and ambiguity.
The Tbilisi-born artist and filmmaker has participated in major international institutions including MoMA PS1, New York; the 59th Venice Biennale, Venice; New Museum, New York; WIELS Contemporary Art Center, Brussels; GAMeC, Bergamo; the 22nd Biennale Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo; the 14th Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania; and Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles.
Rothko in Florence
From March 14 to July 26, 2026, Florence will host one of the most significant exhibitions ever held in Italy dedicated to Mark Rothko (1903–70), the undisputed master of American modern art.
The exhibition will explore Rothko’s deep connection with Florence, beginning in the galleries of Palazzo Strozzi and continuing to two iconic sites of Florentine Renaissance heritage: the Museo di San Marco, in dialogue with the frescoes of Beato Angelico, and the vestibule of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, designed by Michelangelo.
Curated by Christopher Rothko and Elena Geuna, the exhibition celebrates the influence of Renaissance art on Rothko’s vision. His first encounter with Florence took place in 1950, during a trip to Italy with his wife Mell, a journey that marked the beginning of his fascination with key artists of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.
Rothko in Florence features a wide selection of the artist’s works, from the 1930s to 1970, including numerous large-scale paintings, many of which have never been shown in Italy. The exhibition includes prestigious loans from the artist’s family as well as major private collections and international museums.
