Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana announced on Wednesday that “From the Heart to the Hands”, an exhibition celebrating the work of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, will travel to the US in 2026. The show is slated to open February 6 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, where it will be on view until June 14.
The ICA Miami run follows presentations at Milan’s Palazzo Reale, Paris’s Grand Palais, and Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni. The show is curated by Florence Müller, an art and fashion historian who previously held positions at the Denver Art Museum and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
The show features over 300 pieces from archival and more recent collections, with an emphasis on the fashion house’s Alta Moda, Alta Sartoria, and Alta Gioielleria lines. The pieces are presented in immersive rooms “inspired by art, architecture, folklore, and the spirit of the dolce vita”, according to a press release. There are also a number of collaborations with visual artists, including Quayola, Alberto Maria Colombo, Obvious, Vittorio Bonapace, and Felice Limosani.
Courtesy Dolce & Gabbana
The exhibition is just the latest museum-quality show put on by a fashion brand. Last year, Loewe staged a show in Shanghai that served as a capstone for designer Jonathan Anderson’s time at the brand. (He left for a position as creative director of Christian Dior earlier this year.) That show too leaned heavily on immersive rooms and showcased the brands collaborations with artists, from Ken Price and Joe Brainard to Pablo Picasso.
Over the last decade or so, cultural institutions have increasingly relied on luxury brands to draw in new audiences, from Victoria & Albert Museum’s 2023 Coco Chanel exhibition to the Brooklyn Museum’s 2024 exhibition “Solid Gold”. (Not to mention the many other fashion exhibitions at the latter institution.) But designer brands crucially get something in return: the imprimatur of the hosting institution. And, in a world where “selling out” is no longer a salient concept, there seems to be little downside for either side.
