Arriving at Palazzo Reale with a wide and unprecedented selection of the most iconic, powerful, and non-conformist works, the exhibition Robert Mapplethorpe. The Forms of Desire will offer visitors to Milan, even during the Olympic and Paralympic period, the great opportunity to encounter the work of the American photographer, one of the most original, refined, and controversial of the 20th century.

Born in New York in 1946 and died in Boston at only 42 years old, Mapplethorpe is one of the interpreters of the counterculture between the Sixties and Seventies, when creativity becomes a political gesture and the arts merge into new languages of freedom and identity.

Promoted by the Municipality of Milan-Culture and produced by Palazzo Reale and Marsilio Arte in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation of New York, the exhibition is part of the cultural program of the Winter Olympic Games in Milan Cortina 2026.

Curated by Denis Curti, it will be hosted in the rooms of Palazzo Reale from January 29 to May 17, 2026.

The retrospective Robert Mapplethorpe. The Forms of Desire is the second chapter of a broader trilogy, which began in Venice in the Rooms of Photography and will then continue in Rome. Each event explores a path of study and research aimed at deepening a different aspect of Mapplethorpe's figure.

In Milan, the focus is on his aesthetic research, his sensual nudes that stand out for their formal perfection, a Greek Olympic mimesis, highlighting musculature and physical tension: the body, sculpted by the skillful use of light and contrasts, is the means for the sublimation of his artistic investigation.

Accompanying and deepening the exhibition is a podcast - available from October 21 on Spotify, Apple Music, and on major platforms - Mapplethorpe Unframed, written and conducted by Nicolas Ballario, and a catalog published by Marsilio Arte, which investigates the vast production and evolution of Mapplethorpe's language through 257 works.