In the gilded halls of Palazzo Reale, where history meets imagination, Milan is hosting a striking exploration of contemporary identity and aesthetic disruption. The exhibition From Cindy Sherman to Francesco Vezzoli: 80 Contemporary Artists draws from the private collection of the Milanese lawyer and philanthropist Giuseppe Iannaccone, unveiling for the first time its contemporary core: over 140 works by 80 artists from around the globe.

The collection, built patiently over decades, had initially focused on Italian Expressionism of the 1930s and ’40s, before expanding to embrace global contemporary art from the 1980s onwards. From early on, Iannaccone demonstrated an uncanny ability to acquire works by emerging artists who would go on to shape the international art scene — often long before they gained institutional or commercial recognition.

Curated by Daniele Fenaroli with academic support of Vincenzo de Bellis, this exhibition doesn’t simply display a collection — it proposes a kaleidoscopic narrative, one where gender, memory, the body, and cultural identity unfold across media and continents. Each room acts as a chapter in a story that deliberately blurs the lines between dream and reality, myth and modernity.

Divided into eleven thematic rooms, the exhibition opens with a striking monographic space devoted to Cindy Sherman, where iconic works from her Untitled Film Stills and Clown series set the tone: a space where artifice and authenticity blur, and where constructed identity becomes a stage for cultural critique.

From there, a cascade of compelling juxtapositions unfolds. Nan Goldin’s raw diaristic photography resonates alongside Lisa Yuskavage’s provocative nudes and Francesco Vezzoli’s seductive deconstructions of celebrity and gender. An early, large-scale painting by Hernan Bas — Ubu Roi (The War March), 2009 — stands out as my personal highlight in the exhibition. Inspired by Alfred Jarry’s absurdist theatrical figure, Bas depicts a clownish king leading a blindly following bourgeoisie into the abyss — a brilliantly satirical and politically resonant work that Iannaccone acquired early in the artist’s career. It’s a powerful reminder of the collector’s foresight in identifying artists whose work probes the complexities of our time.

The exhibition also brings forward works by artists such as Kehinde Wiley, Ifeyinwa Joy Chiamonwu, and Os Gêmeos — artists who reinvent and reassert cultural heritage and representation through their distinct aesthetic vocabularies. Kiki Smith’s Woman with Wolfand Guardian offer mythic meditations on nature and femininity, while Hiba Schahbaz and Shadi Ghadirian offer intimate portrayals of women negotiating identity across tradition and transgression.

But what holds the exhibition together is not only its curatorial logic — it’s the sensitivity with which the collection has been assembled. “It’s wonderful to look at the history of art and see,” says Giuseppe Iannaccone, “how artists have always explored feelings, emotions, pleasures, and the torments of human beings. Epochs follow one another, and artists adapt to the shifting social and economic context, inventing new forms of poetry; but the human heart remains the same, and I can see a common essence, a shared poetic component, in every period of art.” This sentiment throbs through the entire exhibition like a pulse, reminding visitors that at the core of all art is the persistent drive to understand, reflect, and transcend the self.

Founded in 2023 by Giuseppe Iannaccone and his spouse Alessia, the Fondazione Giuseppe Iannaccone was created to go beyond traditional cultural initiatives. It sees art as a powerful way to understand the present and promote diversity, while offering support to people in vulnerable social situations. The foundation focuses on education, cultural heritage, and community projects, with the aim of making a positive impact both culturally and socially.

In a time when contemporary art often slips into spectacle or becomes ensnared by the market, From Cindy Sherman to Francesco Vezzoli feels refreshing. It dares to be introspective. It offers no grand thesis but invites visitors — gently, insistently — to confront themselves in the shifting surfaces of others.

From Cindy Sherman to Francesco Vezzoli: 80 Contemporary Artists
Palazzo Reale, Milan | 7 March — 4 May 2025

© Photo courtesy of Press Office

“My collection does not belong to the history of art,” Alain Dominique Perrin, the president of the foundation, once stated plainly. “It is a collection of a free man.” This philosophy—at once principled and pragmatic—has shaped one of the most singular institutional collections in contemporary art. When the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain opened Jean Nouvel’s architectural intervention at No. 2, place du Palais-Royal, in October 2025, it revealed nearly 600 works drawn from a 4,500-piece collection assembled almost entirely outside the traditional acquisition channels.

The inaugural exhibition, Exposition Générale, marked not merely a change of address but a moment of reckoning: four decades of collecting conducted according to the rules largely antithetical to museum orthodoxy. Works are commissioned for temporary exhibitions, then acquired. Deaccessioning is permitted, with proceeds reinvested into new production. Emerging artists are supported alongside the established figures. And, crucially, institutional activity remains strictly separated from Cartier’s commercial operations. “In 27 years of the Fondation Cartier,” Perrin emphasized, “I have never once asked an artist to work for Cartier.”

A Collection Built Through Dialogue

Under this model, the collection functions less as a repository than as a process. Grazia Quaroni, who has been overseeing the collection for over two decades and co-curating Exposition Générale with Béatrice Grenier, describes it as “a living organism”—continually reshaped through dialogue with artists. Exhibition precedes acquisition; relationships precede objects.

Works created for temporary shows enter the collection, while others are sold to fund future commissions. Artists often return across decades, building bodies of work that trace their own development alongside that of the institution. Cai Guo-Qiang, Huang Yong Ping, and Chéri Samba all arrived at the Fondation’s former site in Jouy-en-Josas early in their careers, at a moment when their international recognition was far from assured. Their sustained engagement reflects a curatorial structure that privileges continuity over novelty.

“The collection is essentially composed of works created and presented through the Fondation Cartier’s programming,” Quaroni explains. This inversion of the usual museum logic—where acquisition precedes exhibition—has enabled forms of artistic trust rarely possible within conventional institutional frameworks.

Architecture as Collection Strategy

Jean Nouvel’s new building materializes this philosophy architecturally. Inside the preserved Haussmann façades and Percier–Fontaine arcades, five massive steel platforms move vertically through eleven possible positions within a volume rising eleven meters high. “It’s a bit like a super-theatre,” Nouvel explains, “where you lift extremely heavy floors.”

The system allows for what he calls “every possible altitude,” alongside radically variable lighting conditions, from full illumination to complete darkness. Rather than fixing exhibition space, the architecture renders it provisional — reconfigurable according to curatorial need

For Exposition Générale, works were organized thematically rather than chronologically. Machines d’architecture brought together utopian and speculative architectural projects across multiple vertical planes. Being Nature juxtaposed the Yanomami drawings with Giuseppe Penone’s forest-based works and Solange Pessoa’s feather constructions. Making Things dissolved boundaries between art, design, and craft, while A Real World layered scientific visualization, mathematical notation, and speculative fiction.

The installation, designed by Formafantasma, used fabric “lanterns” to guide circulation without imposing rigid divisions. As the curators note, these spaces “explore their social potential as places of exchange and shared experience.” Works are visible from multiple levels simultaneously, creating visual relationships impossible in traditional white-cube galleries.

Historical Continuity, Contemporary Purpose

The exhibition’s title consciously evokes the “general exhibitions” once staged in the same building by the Grands Magasins du Louvre in the late nineteenth century—commercial spectacles that brought objects from across the globe to a broad Parisian public. “By gathering objects and goods from every horizon,” the curators write, “these events contributed to the expansion of the cultural field and the circulation of new forms of knowledge.”

The building’s history reinforces this lineage. Constructed for the 1855 Exposition Universelle as the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, it became a department store in 1863 and later the Louvre des Antiquaires. Each incarnation experimented with new modes of display and audience engagement. Nouvel’s intervention continues this trajectory, transforming the interior into a kinetic rather than static architecture.

Four Decades Forward

Today, the collection comprises more than 4,500 works by over 500 artists from 50 countries. These figures matter less than the methodology behind them: no pre-existing endowment, no conventional acquisition committee, and no deference to market consensus. Instead, the collection grows through sustained engagement with the artists working in the present.

“Institutions must have their own ideas, their own tastes, and their own eye,” Perrin says. He respects artists’ freedom, supports their work, and engages in frank conversation when necessary. The Palais-Royal building amplifies this approach, offering endlessly reconfigurable platforms, exposed interiors, and spaces that encourage experimentation rather than confinement.

Nouvel captures the institution’s ethos: “The Fondation Cartier will probably offer the greatest differentiation of spaces, the greatest number of ways of exhibiting, and the greatest number of viewpoints.” Here artists can try things impossible elsewhere. The collection continues to evolve along unpredictable trajectories, sustained by curiosity rather than tradition.

“I don’t really care about leaving traces,” Perrin says. What matters is whether the next generation recognizes itself in the work—a conversation that unfolds across time, objects, and human relationships.

Exposition Générale continues through 23 August 2026 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, No. 2, place du Palais-Royal, Paris.

Dates: 25 October 2025 — 23 August 2026
Place: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, No. 2, place du Palais-Royal, Paris.

Contributor: Daria Solignac