MART – ROVERETO
November 1, 2025 – March 22, 2026
On the occasion of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Mart presents Sport. The Challenges of the Body. Through over 350 works of art and archival materials, the exhibition explores how the visual arts have represented the body in sports.
If sport is a mass phenomenon par excellence, art has certainly contributed to the iconography of the myth. From Myron’s “discus thrower” to contemporary legends, the exhibition highlights how the narrative of the body in sports performance has defined the birth of heroes and heroines, be they classical athletes or wrestlers or icons of the present.
Despite references to ancient art, the exhibition pays particular attention to modern and contemporary production, establishing a dialogue between prestigious loans from public and private collections and masterpieces belonging to the museum’s collections. The exhibition, divided into 8 thematic sections (The Origins, Hand-to-Hand Combat, Teamwork, Beyond the Limit, In the Water, Flying Bodies/Dancing Bodies, Running, In the Cold), also features numerous documents, objects, trophies, photographs, illustrations, and advertisements, in keeping with the multidisciplinary perspective that has always characterized the Mart.
The curators’ research also includes precious documents from the Mart’s 20th Century Archives and the collections of the Alinari Foundation for Photography, as well as costumes, artifacts, and materials. Some objects belonging to or used by sports legends almost assume the status of memorabilia. This is the case, for example, of the bicycles of Gino Bartali (winner of the Giro d’Italia in 1936, 1937, 1946 and of the Tour de France in 1938, 1948), Fausto Coppi (winner of the Giro d’Italia in 1940, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953 and of the Tour de France in 1949, 1952), Gastone Nencini (winner of the Giro d’Italia in 1957 and of the Tour de France in 1960) and the bicycle with which Francesco Moser broke the record on 23 January 1984 in Mexico City. of the hour, breaking the 50-kilometer barrier.
Also on display are a soccer ball from the 1930s, so different from the balls used today; technical clothing made by Missoni; the costume that Carla Fracci wore to dance La Sylphide in 1983; and the Harlequin costume that Ferruccio Soleri wore for more than 60 years, entering the Guinness Book of Records as the actor who played the same role for an entire lifetime.
From a contemporary perspective, the exhibition suggests that the body is not just a tool for setting new records or performing extraordinary performances. Competition involves tension, both physical and emotional, and contrasts, between perfection and failure, records and limits.
With Sport. The challenges of the body, the Mart Museum in Rovereto is participating in the Milan Cortina 2026 Cultural Olympics, the multidisciplinary, diverse, and widespread program designed to promote Olympic and Paralympic values through culture, heritage, and sport. The Cultural Olympics is a project of the Milano Cortina 2026 Foundation.
The exhibition is part of the cultural system project Combinations_sports characters, conceived and promoted by the Department of Culture of the Autonomous Province of Trento to network the local museums around a common theme. The goal: to enhance their identity from a multidimensional perspective that includes mutual comparison, the exchange of knowledge, and challenges.
