Curated by Germano Celant

On the occasion of Expo Milano 2015—its theme is “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”—Celant will mount an ambitious exhibition exploring the history of food as a symbolic, ritual, and material presence in the arts. Serving up more than two thousand works produced between 1851 (the year of the first Expo in London) and 2015, in an enormously wide range of media, the show will explore the alimentary angles of everything from sustainability to postcolonial hybridity and promises a rich sensorial experience set in reconstructed dining rooms, kitchens, and bars, all designed by Studio Italo Rota. From Monet’s Der Koch (Le Chef Père Paul), 1882, to Daniel Spoerri’s 1968 Le Coin du Restaurant Spoerri, and from Meret Oppenheim’s Bon Appétit, Marcel, 1966, to Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Ohne Titel (Bon voyage Monsieur Ackermann), 1995, it seems nothing will be left out or extraneously in. This veritable feast will be accompanied by a “cookbook,” featuring fifty essays and more than one thousand illustrations.

— Mary Ann Caws

Architecture firm OMA reveals its Midas touch with the new venue of Fondazione Prada, opening this month with a swarm of inaugural activities. Led by Rem Koolhaas, OMA has transformed the industrial compound of a former distillery, erecting three new buildings and renovating seven existing structures. One, completely covered in gold leaf, will host a site-specific work by Robert Gober, and an installation by Thomas Demand will occupy the basement of another. The impressive range of exhibition environments includes a cavernous former sugar-storage area and a sixty-meter white concrete tower. And while the new site boasts a vintage-style Milanese bar designed by Wes Anderson and an educational space conceived by the students of the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles, the crown jewel is Podium, a centrally located pavilion. Here, archaeologist Salvatore Settis will stage “Serial Classic,” a subversive but scholarly exhibition of classical sculpture, focusing on the relationship between originality and imitation in Roman culture.

— Francesco Bonami