Art in the City: Exhibitions to See

Museion, Bolzano Bozen’s museum of modern and contemporary art in Piazza Piero Siena, is hosting RAMM:ELL:ZEE TIME:LINE until 14 March 2027. This is the exhibition’s only Italian stop and the first major European retrospective dedicated to RAMMELLZEE (1960–2010), one of the most radical and unclassifiable figures in New York’s cultural scene of the 1980s. More than 150 works reconstruct the universe of an artist who transformed language into material, letters into combative forms and the alphabet into an instrument of resistance. An artist, theorist, sculptor, performer and Master of Ceremonies, RAMMELLZEE moved between graffiti, hip-hop and contemporary art without allowing himself to be confined to any single category. In 1979, he formulated two theories that would guide his work for more than three decades: Gothic Futurism and Iconoclastic Panzerism. His premise was radical: if language is a tool of control, letters themselves must be rethought, distorted and liberated. This vision underpins TIME, curated by Hugo Vitrani and Cédric Fauq, with exhibition design by Pascal Rodriguez. 

This year, Bolzano is also commemorating its longest-serving mayor, Dr Julius Perathoner, who died on 17 April 1926, with a series of events. The Civic Museum, in collaboration with the City Historical Archive and the Museumsverein Bozen, presents objects, documents, and photographs from its own collections and private collections, offering insight into his life and work. Julius Perathoner served as mayor from 1895, the year of his first appointment, until 1922, when his mandate was revoked by royal decree. Born in 1849 in Dietenheim, near Brunico-Bruneck, he practised law in Bolzano from 1872 and joined the city council in 1893. His tenure was marked by a major programme of urban modernisation. Three schools that still stand today were built, along with the new Town Hall, the Civic Museum, constructed between 1902 and 1904, and the Civic Theatre, which was severely damaged by bombing during the Second World War and subsequently demolished. His achievements also included the electrification of the city centre, the introduction of two tram lines to Gries and Bronzolo-Bronzoll, and the construction of cableways to Kohlern—the world's first cable car designed to transport passengers—as well as to Virgolo-Virgl and Renon-Ritten. The drinking water network was also significantly expanded, partly thanks to the incorporation of the municipality of Dodiciville-Zwölfmalgrein into Bolzano in 1911. 

At the Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare, the exhibition Primary Structures / Multiple Systems. 60 Years of Minimalism is on view until the end of 2028. The exhibition seeks to celebrate and reassess the historical legacy of Minimalism and its influence on contemporary art through a selection of works from the collection, sixty years after the landmark exhibition Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors, held at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1966. Curated by Kynaston McShine, the 1966 exhibition established the prominence of artists such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt, introducing a new concept of sculpture based on formal reduction, seriality, and objectivity. 

Primary Structures / Multiple Systems explores how this geometric vocabulary was absorbed, transformed, and ultimately challenged by subsequent generations of artists, becoming a tool for deciphering the complex systems of contemporary reality. The exhibition unfolds across several spaces, from the ground floor, including the Black Box, to the first floor. Its itinerary connects the public and private spheres and brings together international artists, including Andrea Fraser, Fabio Mauri, Mario Garcia Torres, James Turrell, and Nairy Baghramian. The project expands the boundaries of Minimalist language through practices that question institutions, memory, identity, ecology, and systems of power, weaving together light, space, time, and social critique. 

Image: RAMM:ELL:ZEE TIME:LINE, Courtesy Mimmo Laera