Franco Battiato: “Another Life” Brings the Icon’s Restless Genius to MAXXI

Opening Jan. 31 at MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo and running through April 26, 2026, the exhibition-event moves through music, painting, and cinema in seven chapters, with rare materials and a multisensory centerpiece designed to pull visitors inside the Battiato universe.

Sometimes an exhibition doesn’t simply tell an artist’s story, it closes the distance, until the work feels almost within reach. That’s the bet behind “Franco Battiato. Another Life,” on view Jan. 31 through April 26, 2026 at MAXXI’s Spazio Extra, a step-by-step journey that reads as biography, interior landscape, emotional archive, and a passage across mediums. Five years after his death, Battiato returns here not as a fixed icon, but as a living presence, a mind still in motion, still changing shape, still provoking questions.

Co-produced by Italy’s Ministry of Culture and MAXXI, the show is curated by Giorgio Calcara with Grazia Cristina Battiato, and organized by C.O.R. Creare Organizzare Realizzare in collaboration with the Fondazione Franco Battiato ETS. Drawing on memories, previously unseen materials, and rare documents, the exhibition builds an intimate, layered portrait of an artist whose constant reinvention permanently altered the vocabulary of Italian culture.

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