ROME.- Rome is preparing to celebrate the life and work of one of Italy’s most influential cultural figures with Franco Battiato. Another Life, a major exhibition opening at the MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo from January 31 to April 26, 2026. Presented five years after his passing, the exhibition offers an intimate and expansive portrait of Franco Battiato—an artist whose music, ideas, and restless curiosity reshaped Italian culture.

Hosted in the museum’s Extra Space, the exhibition traces Battiato’s extraordinary journey through music, art, philosophy, and cinema. Co-produced by Italy’s Ministry of Culture and MAXXI, and curated by Giorgio Calcara with Grazia Cristina Battiato, the project brings together rare archival materials, personal memories, and previously unseen works to create a deeply immersive experience that moves well beyond a traditional retrospective.

Visitors are invited to walk through seven thematic sections that mirror the many lives Battiato lived: from his early years traveling from Sicily to Milan, to his groundbreaking experiments in sound; from the moment he crossed from the avant-garde into mainstream success, to his lifelong engagement with mysticism and spirituality bridging East and West. The exhibition also explores his return to essential values, his role as a mentor and master figure, and his later work in film, where sound gradually transformed into image.

At the heart of the exhibition lies an octagonal listening room—an architectural nod to the musical octave—where visitors are surrounded by an immersive sound installation. Here, Battiato’s music becomes a physical presence, enveloping the listener and reinforcing the sense that his work was always meant to be experienced as much as contemplated.

Alongside music and film, the exhibition highlights a lesser-known but deeply personal aspect of Battiato’s creativity: his painting. Featuring works marked by golden backgrounds, symbolic imagery, and archetypal forms, this section reveals his fascination with allegory and Middle Eastern visual traditions—an influence that quietly informed his music for decades.

The final chapters focus on Battiato’s cinematic output, including narrative films and documentaries that reflect his artistic and spiritual inquiries. These works are presented not as a departure from music, but as a natural extension of it—another language through which he continued his dialogue with the contemporary world.

Accompanied by talks, special events, and a dedicated catalogue, Franco Battiato. Another Life stands as a tribute to an artist who refused to be confined by genre or expectation. More than a celebration of a career, the exhibition is an invitation to reconnect with a body of work that continues to ask essential questions about meaning, beauty, and that elusive “permanent center of gravity” that Battiato so memorably sought—and helped others seek—in art and in life.