The exhibition

Curated by: Sergio Risaliti and Stefania Rispoli, in dialogue with Johanna Gautier-Morin.

7 May – 12 October 2026

For its 50th anniversary, the European University Institute opened the doors of Palazzo Buontalenti with an exhibition that brought academic research into dialogue with contemporary art.

OPEN started from Measuring the Invisible Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2026), the research of historian and EUI alumna Johanna Gautier-Morin on the work, care and resources that sustain economic life but remain outside official measurement: unpaid domestic work, informal labour, reconstruction after war and the use of natural resources. Seven artists responded to this research as a critical and speculative echo, questioning the data and models through which we describe the world.

The title, taken from one of the works in the garden, carries a double meaning: the opening of the EUI to the city, and the ambiguity of the very idea of openness.

Four key concepts

• Gleaning: recovering what is marginal, residual or discarded as a cognitive, aesthetic and material resource.
• Exhaustion: the mental, physical and environmental limits produced within systems of production, which also sustain them.
• Irreversibility: processes of no return that shape social and ecological worlds, where damage accumulates over long periods of time.
• Mutation: continuous transformation, giving rise to new forms of coexistence and relation.

The artworks

In the San Marco garden

• Riccardo Previdi, OPEN (2015). Made in response to the tragedies of migration in the Mediterranean, the luminous sign at the entrance welcomed visitors as both an invitation and a threshold: what does it mean to be “open”, and for whom?
• Leone Contini, Sorgente (2026). A spring rising from the rubble of the building’s own restoration, where Sicilian cucuzze gourds and similar varieties grown by Chinese farmers in Prato took root: at once garden and ruin.
• Johanna Gautier-Morin and Pierre Chastel, Fragments of Self (2026). A polyphonic sound work that follows a single day between care, work and self-performance, part of The TUD Project (Time-Use Diary).

In the central hall and the rooms of the palazzo

• Elena Mazzi and Johanna Gautier-Morin, Gleaning (Mutation, Irreversibility, Exhaustion) (2026). Texts, data and quotations written on the walls, with spinning chairs that unsettle the visitor’s balance. Realised with six students of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze: Michele Bernardini, Elena Coli, Marta Fumanti, Gaia Lupo, Alessandro Musumeci and Antonio Vasquez.
• Elena Mazzi, Polar Silk Road (Map 1) (2023), Polar Silk Road map series #1–8 (2025–2026) and Sápmi Flatbed (2022). A tapestry map and works on paper on the new Arctic trade routes opened by melting ice, and an island of soft mountain forms that visitors could touch and rearrange.
• Berlinde De Bruyckere, Arcangelo III (San Giorgio) (2023–2024) and The Embalmer (Dornbirn) (2015). A faceless archangel in a former courtroom, a figure that first appeared during the COVID-19 pandemic as a tribute to healthcare workers, and horse skins among the empty shelves of the former archive of the Court of Appeal.
• Eglė Budvytytė, Songs from the Compost: mutating bodies, imploding stars (2020). A 30-minute film shot among the lichen forests and sand dunes of the Curonian Peninsula in Lithuania, on the interdependence of human and non-human life.
• Agnieszka Polska, The Book of Flowers (2023) and Braudel Clocks (2022). A film that combines AI-generated animation and 16 mm footage to imagine a lost symbiosis between humans and plants, and two rotating clocks that question time as a single, neutral measure.

Sala delle Grottesche

In the room dedicated to the Agenzia del Demanio, Gina Soden’s photographic project Memory and Vision explores three Florentine sites in transition: Palazzo Buontalenti, the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte and the former Caserma Redi. The room remains as it is until the next exhibition.

Works courtesy of the artists, Fondazione MUSEION (Bolzano), Hauser & Wirth, Galleria Continua, Lombardi-Kargl, Artopia Gallery (Milan) and Ex Elettrofonica (Rome).

Today

The works by Riccardo Previdi and Leone Contini in the San Marco garden, and Gina Soden’s Memory and Vision in the Sala delle Grottesche, remain on view and can be visited on request.

 

Find out more

2026 photos

Opening evening Opening evening

Visit of President Mattarella Visit of President Mattarella

Report on the pilot edition

News

• President Mattarella visits the EUI
• Berlinde De Bruyckere in conversation

Officine d'Orizzonti

the school programme the school programme

Plan your visit

Visit and programme Visit and programme

Press Coverage

Read the most relevant articles related to the OPEN exhibition:

• Quasi 7.000 presenze e 1.400 visite guidate: il bilancio di OPEN a Palazzo Buontalenti, Gazzetta di Firenze, 13 October 2026.
• Firenze, a Palazzo Buontalenti 7 mila presenze per mostra "Open" "A new civic space for art and science", Aska News, 13 October 2026.
• Quasi 7.000 presenze e 1.400 visite guidate: il bilancio di OPEN a Palazzo Buontalenti, Gazzetta Toscana, 13 October 2026.
• Le forme del valore. I curatori di OPEN raccontano una mostra tra ecologia e possibilità di coesistenza, ArteIn, 24 luglio 2026.
• OPEN. Sette artisti in dialogo a Palazzo Buontalenti", ArtsLife, 12 July 2026.
• "Mettere in mostra l’economia invisibile. Lo fa un’esposizione a Firenze", Artribune, 27 June 2026.
• "OPEN, una mostra per la riapertura di Palazzo Buontalenti", FUL Magazine, 24 May 2026.
• "Open", Itinerari nell'arte, May 2026.
• "Come apparirebbe la nostra vita se le dinamiche invisibili che la sostengono venissero finalmente portate alla luce", Il Giornale dell'Arte, May 2026.
• "Firenze riapre il dialogo tra arte e pensiero", TG regione, 8 May 2026.
• "Palazzo Buontalenti: mostra Open", Firenze Today, 8 May 2026.
• "“Open”: arte e ricerca dialogano all'Istituto Universitario Europeo", La Nazione online, 7 May 2026.
• "OPEN: a Firenze l’arte contemporanea svela il valore dell’economia invisibile", Revenews, 4 May 2026.
• "Open", Artribune (Eventi), 30 April 2026.

Concept Notes