Cremona looks to the contemporary
A widespread exhibition with 20 Italian and international artists of different generations to enhance the historical-artistic heritage
From 23 to 31 May 2026 the city of Cremona discovers contemporary art through the fourth edition of Cremona Contemporanea, an initiative based on the idea of enhancing the historical-artistic heritage through exhibitions and installations spread throughout the territory.
The project was born five years ago from an intuition of the councillor Luca Burgazzi together with the artist Ettore Favini, based in Cremona, who had realised a work on fabric representing the Cremonese Po and its tributaries, which was appreciated by the citizens and is now on display at the City Hall. This is how the curator Rossella Farinotti, who has become artistic director of the event, came to be called. It is not a fair, nor an event behind which there are galleries, but certainly an excellent opportunity for visibility for the artists and for the city.
Transgenerational Dialogue
This year, for the first time, other curators were also involved. In particular, Saverio Verini, Gioele Melandri and Valeria Mancinelli who, together with Farinotti, have invited artists of various generations, creating a quality event that not only sheds light on well-known and lesser-known places in the city, succeeds in giving a fine opportunity for visibility to many Italian artists, in dialogue with international names such as Miriam Cahn or Lina Lapelyte, already winner of the Golden Lion for her Lithuanian Pavilion and now exhibiting at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin for the Chanel commission.
The many emerging and mid-career Italian artists involved in the various editions form a community around the event. This year, for the first time, a historical master, Giò Pomodoro, whose archive Farinotti looks after, was also included, but with youthful works, rarely exhibited, made in fibreglass in the late 1960s and early 1960s, which are extremely fresh and contemporary (prices for this type of work range from 35 to 275 thousand euro).
Tourism and Budget
The event is part of a broader strategy to diversify Cremona's tourist offer, traditionally linked to music, violin-making and historical-monumental heritage, helping to broaden the target audience and deseasonalise flows, also focusing on international tourism, which according to Istat data is growing. Visitors to the exhibition spread to 15,000 in 2023 and 20,000 in 2024, a year in which more than 70,000 visits to the event's website were recorded, while media coverage grew from about 100 press releases in 2023 to 236 articles and mentions in 2024. Visitors also exceeded 20 thousand in 2025.
The Municipality of Cremona is the first supporter of the event, with a contribution that has risen from 20 thousand euro in the first year to 50 thousand euro today. Another main supporter is the Fondazione Comunitaria della Provincia di Cremona, which has been present since the first year, with a contribution of 20 thousand euros. Of fundamental importance are also the technical sponsorships, which have risen from four in the first edition to no less than 19 in the current one, which have represented a sign of true involvement of the city. And then there are the realities that have supported the part of volunteers guarding the sites and works: Auser Cremona, Circolo Atlante, the city's schools and universities.
