November is always one of those months that surprises, despite a dreary day or two – you can always be assured of plenty of activities as we are continuing harvest season. We have been lucky so far with wonderful weather, but when the clouds come out and rain starts to pour, visiting one of Tuscany’s many museums or exhibits is a wonderful way to pass time and get your cultural fix. We picked three top exhibits that we think you should visit this winter.

1. Divine Beauty, Palazzo Strozzi, Until January 26, 2016, Florence

As always, Palazzo Strozzi always manages to pull of incredible exhibits that have a high user-experience and allow for your creativity to flow from the questions they ask. On this show over 100 works by well-known Italian and international artists set out to explore the relationship between art and religion from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. You will be able to see masterpieces by Domenico Morelli, Gaetano Previati, Felice Casorati, Gino Severini, Renato Guttuso (with his Crucifixion), Lucio Fontana, and Emilio Vedova, among the Italians, and Vincent van Gogh (with his Pietà), Marc Chagall (White Crucifixion), Jean-François Millet (Angelus), Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Stanley Spencer, Georges Rouault and Henri Matisse, among the internationals.

Open Daily including holidays 10.00-20.00
Thursdays: 10.00-23.00

Info, Tel +39 055 2645155, info@palazzostrozzi.org, bookings: prenotazioni@palazzostrozzi.org

2. Contemporary Prato, At Palazzo Pretorio (Praetorian Palace Museum) visit SYNCHRONICITY Contemporaries, from Lippi to Warhol. Until January 2016

Prato is a charming Tuscan town that is less than an hour from us in Vicchio (and is also home to awesome homemade biscotti). Here you will be able to see a historical path after WWII through contemporary artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Matthew Barney and Vanessa Beecroft  next to those in the permanent exhibit including Filippo LIppi and Donatello, You won’t want to miss works like the late Gothic paintings and Renaissance altarpieces, later arriving at the turret where the works from the 19th and 20th centuries are on display, like those of Jacques Lipchitz. Curated by Stefano Pezzato, setup by Francesco Procopio.

Opening times: daily from 10.30am–6.30pm, closed non-holiday Tuesdays, address: Piazza del Comune, 2, 59100. Full price ticket costs 8 Euros.

3. Barberino di Mugello, Fernando Galassi Exhibit, Until November 28th 2015

In our own nexk of the woods in the Mugello valley, there are also plenty of events including a special exhibition of minimalist and conceptual arts by Fernando Galassi at Palazzo Pretorio in Barberino di Mugello. “Art does not reproduce what is visible, but makes visible what is not always so.”(Paul Klee). The idea behind this exhibit is to not think about art as a representation of reality,  but instead as a discourse on reality and thus a simple reproduction.
Galassi’s signs and colors give rise to primordial forms, representations of a nonobjective reality, and become almost anonymous. His imaginary landscapes, landscapes of memory, landscapes minimum reporting back in time, evoke spontaneous “scribbles” on paper that reveal the deep mechanisms and abstract nature. More info here (in Italian)

Opening time: Monday to Friday from 2.30pm to 6.30pm. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 9am to 1pm – Saturday and Sunday from 4pm to 7pm.

Address: PALAZZO PRETORIO, Piazza Cavour 36, Barberino di Mugello