Depending on the sport, the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics are taking place in Milan and Cortina. This is an exciting time for snow sports enthusiasts and photography lovers alike, with numerous exhibitions taking place. In addition, the Olimpiade Culturale di Milano Cortina 2026 is a multidisciplinary and widespread programme that promotes Olympic and Paralympic values through culture and art.
In Veneto, the region where Cortina d’Ampezzo is located, there are many photography exhibitions, some of which part of the Cultural Olympics circuit. Together, they provide a comprehensive overview of the region’s photographic locations, forming a map to explore, which includes plains, mountains, cities and unforgettable monuments. Veneto has nine UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These include the prehistoric pile dwellings at Arquà Petrarca, near Padua, Urbs Picta, home to a heritage of 14th-century frescoes (including Giotto’s work in the Scrovegni Chapel) and the oldest university botanical garden in the world (1545). Other sites include Verona, with its Arena and the home of Romeo and Juliet, Vicenza and its Palladian villas, the Prosecco hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, Venice and its Lagoon, with the Venetian Works of Defence. And, of course, the Dolomites.
We will try to list the current photography exhibitions. But this is not an exhaustive list, because so many events are on.
Let’s start in Cortina, with A Visionary at Altitude – N vijionar sö alalt with titles in Italian and Ladin, the language of the Dolomites, at the Ikonos Art Gallery. This project by Ampezzo photographer Stefano Zardini presents three collections that differ in their visual approach yet are linked by the atmosphere of the mountain world. In Cortina, The Pioneers’ Passion, the first part of the trilogy (which includes Milan, at the Fabbrica del Vapore, and Plan de Corones, at the Lumen-Museum of Mountain Photography), draws on the family’s archive of vintage photos, bringing them up to date with pop-inspired colour and graphic interventions.
Casa Italia Milano Cortina 2026, located in Milan, Cortina and Livigno, is the home of athletes and the hub of sporting celebrations. It is opening to the public for the first time, showcasing contemporary Italian identity through sport, culture, art, design and hospitality. Casa Italia in Cortina is located within the Farsettiarte headquarters, in the former departure station of the old cable car. Project MUSA, featuring works by 18 artists, showcases Italy’s commitment to embracing and celebrating diversity, a core value of the International Olympic Movement. The exhibition includes works by artists such as Giorgio de Chirico and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as photographs by Luca Campigotto and Piero Gemelli.
Also in Cortina, Gisella Motta is holding the exhibitions Le Forme della Neve at the Hotel de la Poste (where Ernest Hemingway stayed in room 107) and I Volti della Neve, as part of the Apreski Mountain Show, depicting the world of snow through its protagonists. On display at the Faloria cable car station, it features around seventy portraits.
The Arena di Verona will host the closing ceremony of the 2026 Olympics and the opening ceremony of the 2026 Paralympics. After ten years, the archaeological site of the Scaligeri Excavations will reopen with the International Centre of Photography, which hosts Winter Games. Gli sport invernali. Fotografie dagli archivi Life. 1936-1972. A timeless vision from the magazine LIFE. Around a hundred photographs are on display, many of which never seen before. They depict sport as a shared experience, a spectacle and a collective ritual and span four decades from the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen to those in Sapporo in 1972, including Cortina (1956). Among the authors: Arthur Rickerby, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and Frank Scherschel.
Una vita per lo sport. Volti e conquiste delle 100 esperte: a gallery of portraits by Gerald Bruneau is on display in the heart of Verona, in Corso Porta Borsari. The portraits include Kirsty Coventry, the newly elected President of the International Olympic Committee. The initiative, promoted by the Bracco Foundation, promotes an inclusive sporting culture recounting the commitment of 21 Italian women in the world of sport, including multi-medal-winning athletes, Paralympic champions, sports organisation managers and activists committed to free access to sport.
In Venice, the Querini Stampalia Foundation is hosting Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri, dedicated to two authors who lived far apart in time: for both of them, seeing becomes a threshold and a mystery. A thin veil connects marble and baroque gestures, light and photographic intuition. Antonio Corradini, a leading figure of the late Baroque period, made veils his signature motif and this is reflected in the work of Luigi Ghirri (works from the Fondo Luigi Ghirri in the Foundation /Roberto Lombardi Collection), for whom fog and diffused light are also veils over the visible world.
Reframing Silk. Giacomo Caneva’s Photographs of the 1859 Expedition to China is a tribute to Niepce, 200 years after View from the Window at Le Gras. photographs by Caneva, original prints from 1859, from the Vanzella collection in Treviso and the Pini collection in Como, are on display at Ca’ Pesaro, the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice, and document the journey of the Friulian nobles Giovan Battista Castellani and Gherardo Freschi, who travelled to India and China in search of silkworms to revive European silk production. Caneva uses calotype photography.
And from 21 February, Le Stanze della Fotografia, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, will host both the exhibition dedicated to Horst P. Horst. The Geometry of Grace (which offers an original interpretation of his work, going beyond the fashion photography that made him famous, and Ahmet Ertuğ. Beyond the vanishing point that offers a monumental perspective on cathedrals, theatres and museums. It is worth stopping to explore the island, facing St. Mark’s Square and home to the Cini Foundation, with the Palladian Cloister, Longhena Wing Library, the Borges Labyrinth and much more.
Near Venice, the JMuseo in Jesolo presents Colors Franco Fontana. Maestro della Fotografia, a monographic exhibition that offers a synthesis of his most iconic works, created between 1961 and 2017. Starting from the assumption that, for Fontana, everything is or becomes landscape, the exhibition recounts Fontana’s research through a display that alternates scenes dense with humanity with almost abstract natural landscapes, stunning architectures and his work on asphalt.
Cortina 1956. Le prime Olimpiadi bianche in Italia. Le foto più iconiche is an open-air exhibition at the McArthurGlen Designer Outlet in Noventa di Piave, near Venice, featuring large-format images from the book with the same name published by Marsilio Arte and Fondazione Cortina. They recount a seminal moment in Italian sport, when Cortina hosted the VII Winter Olympic Games in 1956, marking the great consecration of snow sports in the Italian Alps.
At Palazzo Pinato Valeri in Piove di Sacco, in the province of Padua, there is Lampo di genio, dedicated to Philippe Halsman, one of the most original portrait photographers of the 20th century. He became a photographer in 1930s Paris, working closely with the surrealist community, from whom he learned to view reality with imagination and creativity. In 1940, he arrived in New York with his European sensibility, psychological insight, and desire to innovate in the pages of major magazines such as Life, revolutionising portraiture. His images are halfway between documentation and invention. The famous “jumpology” series is also on display.
There are over 240,000 portraits of Padua residents in the photographic archive of the ArtFoto – Tagliapietra studio, which has been active since the 1950s. Passport photos used to be a very serious matter. Today, that traditional photograph has been almost forgotten, but these images are a historical and anthropological snapshot of the city: many of them are presented in the exhibition Mille Facce di una Città at the Galleria Cavour.
La grande saggezza by Cristina Mittermeier, in collaboration with National Geographic, is on display at the Gallerie d’Italia in Vicenza, at Palazzo Leoni Montanari, a magnificent Baroque building that also houses a museum preserving some masterpieces of 18th-century Venetian painting. The images by Mittermeier are scenographic and make us reflect on very topical environmental issues. Cristina Mittermeier has travelled all over the world as a photographer, marine biologist and activist. Through her work, she narrates the ancient knowledge of cultures around the world and their relationship with the ecosystem, traditions and rituals, inviting us to reflect on a “great wisdom” and formulating the concept of “enoughness”, which stems from the recognition and appreciation of what we already have and what we already are.
Paola Sammartano
Info:
Regione del Veneto
https://www.veneto.eu/en
https://www.culturaveneto.it/
Cultural Olympiad Milano Cortina
https://www.olympics.com/en/milano-cortina-2026/our-projects/cultural-olympiad
A Visionary at Altitude – N vijionar sö alalt – Stefano Zardini
December 27, 2025 – April 13, 2026
Ikonos Art Gallery
Via del Mercato, 1, 32043 Cortina d’Ampezzo BL
https://www.ikonosartgallery.com/
CASA ITALIA – Farsettiarte – Cortina D’Ampezzo
February 6 – February 22, 2026
piazza Roma, 10 – 32043 Cortina d’Ampezzo (BL)
https://casaitalia.coni.it/
Gisella Motta: I Volti della Neve e Le Forme della Neve
February 6 – April 6, 2026
Funivia Faloria, stazione di partenza, Via Ria de Zeto, 10 – 32043 Cortina d’Ampezzo (BL)
Hotel de la Poste, Piazza Roma 14, 32043 Cortina d’Ampezzo (BL)
Winter Games! Gli sport invernali. Fotografie dagli archivi LIFE 1936-1972
February 20– June 2, 2026
Centro Internazionale di Fotografia – Scavi Scaligeri
Cortile Mercato Vecchio, 8 – Verona
https://scaviscaligeri.comune.verona.it/
Una vita per lo sport. Volti e conquiste delle #100esperte
February 4 – March 15, 2026
Verona Corso Porta Borsari
https://www.fondazionebracco.com/
Disapparire. Antonio Corradini e Luigi Ghirri
December 13, 2025 – April 12, 2026
Santa Maria Formosa, Castello 5252, 30122 Venezia
https://www.querinistampalia.org/en
Reframing Silk. Giacomo Caneva’s Photographs of the 1859 Expedition to China
February 6– April 26, 2026
Museo d’Arte Orientale di Venezia
Ca’ Pesaro, Sestiere di Santa Croce n.2076, 30100 Venezia
https://orientalevenezia.beniculturali.it/
Horst P. Horst. The Geometry of Grace
February 21 – July 5, 2026
Ahmet Ertuğ. Beyond the vanishing point
February 21st – April 6th, 2026
Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, 30124 Venezia
https://lestanzedellafotografia.it/en/
COLORS FRANCO FONTANA
Maestro della Fotografia
November 29, 2025 – May 24, 2026
JMuseo, Via Aldo Policek 7,
30016 Jesolo VE
https://jmuseo.it/
https://www.comune.jesolo.ve.it/vivere-il-comune/eventi/franco-fontana-colors/
Cortina 1956. Le prime Olimpiadi bianche in Italia. Le foto più iconiche
January 31 – March 15, 2026
McArthurGlen Noventa di Piave Designer Outlet
Via Marco Polo, 1, 30020 Noventa di Piave VE
https://fondazionecortina.com/news/
https://fondazionecortina.com/news/mcarthurglen-noventa-mostra-fotografica-cortina-1956/
PHILIPPE HALSMAN. Lampo di genio
December 06, 2025 – April 19, 2026
Piove di Sacco (PD), Palazzo Pinato Valeri
Via Garibaldi 54, 35028 Piove di Sacco – PD
www.welcomesaccisica.it
www.comune.piove.pd.it
Mille Facce di una Città
January 16 – March 15, 2026
Galleria Civica Cavour
Piazza Cavour 73b, 35122 Padova
https://www.1000facce.it/
https://padovacultura.padovanet.it/en
Cristina Mittermeier. La grande saggezza
October 3, 2025 – April 6, 2026
Le Gallerie d’Italia – Vicenza
Contra’ S. Corona, 25, 36100 Vicenza
https://gallerieditalia.com/en/vicenza/
