THE MASTERS OF BRERA. Teaching Art

From 30 October 2026 to 10 January 2027, the Stirling Room at Palazzo Citterio in Milan hosts The Masters of Brera. Teaching Art, one of the most anticipated events in the programme of celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (1776–2026).

Curated by Marina Gargiulo e Giovanni Iovane

The exhibition presents a selection of 30 works by artists who taught at the Accademia: Adolfo Wildt, Carlo Carrà, Arturo Martini, Achille Funi, Marino Marini, Gastone Novelli, Alik Cavaliere, Rodolfo Aricò, Luciano Fabro, Alberto Garutti, Fausta Squatriti, Grazia Varisco, Renata Boero, Giuseppe Maraniello and Ugo La Pietra — alongside Lucio Fontana, the most significant artist the Accademia ever trained.

From the early twentieth century to the present day, the Accademia di Brera has played a primary and irreplaceable role in the Italian and international cultural landscape through the teaching and research of its faculty. Far from limiting itself to the preservation and transmission of traditional artistic languages, the institution has established itself as a permanent laboratory of experimentation and avant-garde thinking, capable of nurturing, welcoming and fostering dialogue among the most influential figures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The exhibition reflects the complex, collective vocation of the Palazzo di Brera itself. Born of an Enlightenment vision, the historic building brings together in a single encyclopaedic centre the Accademia, the Pinacoteca, the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, the Astronomical Observatory, the Botanical Garden and the Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere — a cultural ecosystem founded on the synthesis of humanistic, scientific and artistic knowledge, continuously renewed in the face of the questions of our time.