Education understood as shared learning and as a tool for emancipation and social transformation will be the theme of GAMeC’s 2026 program, under the Direction of Lorenzo Giusti.
A wide-ranging Public Program, inspired by Paulo Freire’s theoretical legacy, will run throughout the year, integrating pedagogy, art, and techno-scientific culture through talks, seminars, round tables, and workshops.
During the summer, Fosbury Architecture will transform the Palazzo della Ragione into a permanent laboratory of pedagogical experimentation, where artistic, educational, and civic practices will coexist.
New exhibitions by Ana Silva and Selma Selman—both arising from the activation of educational and workshop-based experiences—will accompany the program.
Additionally, a new format for Radio GAMeC will offer dialogues on contemporary educational practices and artistic methodologies, while a rich schedule of visits to the Collections and experimental learning paths will provide the public with new opportunities for knowledge exchange.
GAMeC 2026: TOWARDS A MUSEUM OF LEARNING
After dedicating the 2024–2025 to exploring new curatorial formats in the fields of cultural production and artistic heritage—through Thinking Like a Mountain, a project aimed at new decentralized, widespread, and participatory modes of art-making, and Galassia, a shared interdisciplinary rereading of the Collection—GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo will continue in 2026 its experimental path leading to the opening of the museum’s new venue. The entire year will be devoted to the theme of education, the museum’s third strategic sphere of activity.
In a context marked by rapid transformations—where technological applications introduce ever-new, and often unconscious, forms of induced learning—the ability to accompany techno-scientific culture with a humanistic education capable of questioning the complexity of our time appears increasingly necessary.
What knowledge, skills, and critical abilities are needed to understand and transform contemporary reality? Which pedagogical practices and approaches foster autonomy, responsibility, and critical thinking, even in contexts that “educate” us automatically through algorithms and digital flows? How can dialogic and participatory processes integrate with museums’ disciplinary expertise? And how can the needs of diverse audiences be gathered and valued in order to build inclusive and innovative cultural narratives and educational practices? In other words, educate for what? And how?
GAMeC’s 2026 program takes shape from these questions, inspired by the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, offering a reinterpretation and contemporary updating of his theories. Freire coined the expression “Pedagogy of Hope,” the title of one of his final essays, in which education is conceived as a practice of freedom, rooted in dialogue and participation.
The program will unfold through moments of study, reflection, and exchange on multiple scales—from local to global—engaging diverse audiences by age, background, education, interest, and language. Collaboration with local, national, and international organizations and institutions active in education—ranging from the museum to the social sector, from techno-scientific culture to civic engagement—will be the driving force of the program, expanding its impact by fostering a network of shared practices.
A PERMANENT LABORATORY: EDUCATION, DIALOGUE, SHARING
At the core of the 2026 program will be the interdisciplinary Public Program, structured around monthly meetings designed to create opportunities for investigation, in-depth study, and dialogue. The schedule will be announced progressively, following an approach that values the reflections emerging over time in a circular dialogue among the planned activities.
The program will include contributions from pedagogical experts, presentations and case study analyses by representatives of international museum institutions and artists involved in integrating research with educational practice, as well as workshops dedicated to experimenting with new methodologies and strengthening relationships with the local community.
Thanks to the involvement of Fondazione Dalmine, the dialogue between humanistic and techno-scientific culture will be a transversal theme, inspired by Freirean pedagogy and by experiences that integrate artistic research, educational practice, and work-based knowledge.
During the summer, the Palazzo della Ragione in Bergamo will host a site-specific installation by Fosbury Architecture, a collective whose work—ranging from the reuse of existing buildings to temporary installations, exhibition design, publishing projects, curatorial activities, and educational programmes—aims to expand the boundaries of the discipline through a multidisciplinary approach and to rethink its production processes in response to current challenges.
The installation will transform the space usually dedicated to exhibitions into a modular landscape, designed to welcome different audiences and adapt to the various cultural activities shaping next year’s program: not merely an exhibition display, but an active platform inviting reflection on education as a relational device.
The Sala delle Capriate will thus assume both a symbolic and an operational role, becoming a permanent laboratory of experimentation, co-learning, and research, where artistic, educational, and civic practices will coexist on a daily basis.
THE EXHIBITIONS OF ANA SILVA AND SELMA SELMAN
Two exhibitions by international artists will be presented in GAMeC’s Spazio Zero, deepening the themes and perspectives of the 2026 program: the first exhibition, from February 26 to September 6, will be dedicated to the work of Angolan-Portuguese artist Ana Silva (Calulo, 1979), while from October 1 to January 24, a site-specific project by Bosnia and Herzegovina-born Romani artist and activist Selma Selman (Bihać, 1991) will be on display.
Eau, Ana Silva’s project, addresses one of the most severe and persistent crises of our time: access to drinking water. Conceived for GAMeC’s Spazio Zero, the project is developed in collaboration with a network of local embroiderers, invited by the artist to intervene in some of her textile works.
In the production of her pieces, Silva initially entrusts the subjects she conceives and designs to Angolan embroiderers—where only men are allowed to use sewing machines—before completing the works herself by hand, adding decorations, glitter, and sequins. The language of embroidery—traditionally associated with care, memory, and resistance—is employed by Ana Silva to delicately denounce water scarcity and to reveal a reality in which water is a privilege rather than a right. Each stitch silently bears witness to a fundamental need that is denied, emphasizing the contrast between the delicate gesture of embroidery and the dramatic nature of the subject.
The exhibition space thus becomes a site of inquiry, where textile practice, social research, and environmental investigation intertwine, in a political reinterpretation of everyday life.
Selma Selman’s site-specific project continues the artist’s exploration, which draws on personal and family experiences to investigate identity, social hierarchies, and conflicts among different forms of knowledge, revealing the gaps between official narratives and oral traditions.
For Selman, art represents a form of resistance and sharing. Her work is based on the principle of learn to unlearn, opening new horizons of understanding and creating spaces in which to experiment with alternative ways of knowing. Education also represents for the artist a tool of emancipation and self-determination, even in patriarchal contexts such as that of her community of origin. This led her, in 2017, to establish the “Get the Heck to School” foundation, through which she provides financial support to Romani girls to enable them to complete primary school.
RADIO GAMeC AND NEW ACTIVITIES FOR THE PUBLIC
At the same time, RADIO GAMeC will continue its activities with a new platform dedicated to education. Through the voices of artists, researchers, and professionals working in the field of education, the radio will offer narratives and dialogues on contemporary artistic and educational practices, confirming itself as a place for reflection and exchange open to new perspectives. Throughout the year, workshops, guided and thematic tours dedicated both to temporary exhibitions and to the museum’s Collections will involve visitors in shared learning experiences, adopting new experimental practices—progressively refined over the course of the year—thus strengthening GAMeC’s role as an educational hub in the territory.