LA NOTA MANCANTE — Inaugural Exhibition

Opening on May 21, 2026, the Fondazione Maddalena Di Giacomo inaugurates its programme with La Nota Mancante, an exhibition conceived as a meditation on memory and on the subtle sensory traces through which memory continues to inhabit the present.

Conceived as a meditation on memory and its elusive nature, La Nota Mancante explores the way recollection persists not as a complete image, but through fragments, sensations, atmospheres, and fleeting impressions that resist language. At its core lies the idea that absence may resonate more deeply than presence, much like a “missing note” that lingers in perception.

The exhibition unfolds as a multisensory journey, where visual art enters into dialogue with scent, sound, and tactile experience. Developed in collaboration with sensory researchers and perfumers, fragrance becomes an integral part of the exhibition’s language, an invisible yet powerful medium through which memory is activated and shared. 

Bringing together contemporary artists from Dorothy Circus Gallery alongside historical and modern masters, the exhibition creates a layered dialogue across time. Works from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century are interwoven with contemporary practices, activating the Fondazione as a living environment in which past and present coexist.

Through a sequence of immersive spaces, from intimate reflections on desire and fragility to meditations on nature, time, and transformation, La Nota Mancante invites visitors to experience art beyond the purely visual, engaging instead in a deeper, embodied encounter.

In this way, the Fondazione Maddalena Di Giacomo emerges as a unique cultural space where art, memory, and the senses converge, establishing a new model for the museum as a living archive of intangible heritage, where even absence becomes a form of presence.

• Fondazione Maddalena Di Giacomo