ROME.- The Museo dell’Ara Pacis opens tomorrow a major retrospective dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe, bringing together more than 200 photographs by one of the defining figures of 20th-century photography. Titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The forms of beauty, the exhibition runs from May 29 through October 4, 2026, and looks beyond the artist’s reputation for provocation to focus on his enduring pursuit of form, balance and classical beauty.

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Curated by Denis Curti, the exhibition presents Mapplethorpe as an artist deeply concerned with perfection. Whether photographing a flower, a face, a nude body or a celebrity sitter, he approached the image with an almost sculptural sense of light and composition. His camera, often a Hasselblad, became a tool for shaping space, transforming bodies and objects into images of striking clarity and formal discipline.

The show arrives in Rome after previous presentations in Venice and Milan, closing a larger exhibition project devoted to Mapplethorpe’s work. At the Ara Pacis, the exhibition takes on a particular resonance. The museum’s setting, surrounded by the language of classical antiquity, creates a natural dialogue with an artist whose photographs often seem to echo marble sculpture, Renaissance order and ancient ideals of proportion.

The exhibition is organized into eight sections and includes some of Mapplethorpe’s best-known subjects: portraits of major cultural figures such as Yoko Ono, Robert Rauschenberg, Donald Sutherland, David Byrne and Richard Gere; self-portraits; intimate images of Patti Smith; powerful photographs of bodybuilder Lisa Lyon; still lifes; flowers; and studies of male and female bodies treated with a rigorous, almost architectural attention to form.

A special section explores Mapplethorpe’s relationship with Italy. Created specifically for the Rome edition, it includes photographs made during the artist’s stays in Capri and Naples, connected to his relationship with the influential gallerist Lucio Amelio. After the devastating 1980 Naples earthquake, Amelio invited Mapplethorpe to participate in Terrae Motus, a project that brought together artists including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Anselm Kiefer, Jannis Kounellis, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Cy Twombly and others. The project sought to transform the trauma of destruction into creative energy.

These Italian images add a more personal dimension to the exhibition, showing Mapplethorpe moving through places where ancient art, urban life and contemporary experience seem to overlap. In Rome, they are presented in conversation with the Museo dell’Ara Pacis itself, as well as with two classical sculptures from the Capitoline Museums: a statue of Aphrodite and a statue of an athlete.

For Curti, the exhibition is also an opportunity to reconsider a long-standing misunderstanding about Mapplethorpe. Rather than seeing him only as an artist of scandal or provocation, the curator emphasizes his classicism: his obsession with symmetry, balance, light and the monumental presence of the human body. In this reading, Mapplethorpe’s most radical gesture was not simply to shock, but to elevate subjects that were once considered controversial into images of timeless beauty.

The exhibition is promoted by Roma Capitale, the Capitoline Superintendency for Cultural Heritage and Marsilio Arte, and organized by Zètema Progetto Cultura and Marsilio Arte in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in New York.

To accompany the show, visitors will find an audio guide curated by Denis Curti, a catalogue published by Marsilio Arte, and the podcast Mapplethorpe Unframed, written and hosted by Nicolas Ballario. The museum has also developed accessibility resources including tactile visits, Italian Sign Language interpretation, audio-tactile paths and subtitled video content.

With its combination of iconic photographs, rarely seen Italian works and a setting deeply tied to the classical past, Robert Mapplethorpe: The forms of beauty presents the photographer not only as a provocative voice of late 20th-century New York, but as an artist whose search for beauty continues to feel urgent, precise and profoundly contemporary.


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