Fundació Miró Mallorca has participated in the exhibition at the MAN - Museo d'Arte della Provincia di Nuoro, entitled Isole e Idoli, which opened on 27 June 2025 and was curated by Chiara Gatti and Stefano Giuliani, with the advice of the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology at the University of Sassari. The exhibition explores the relationships between the anthropology of islands, the protective figures of idols and the fascination that these archaic iconographies exerted on many modern artists.
As part of this institutional collaboration, Fundació Miró Mallorca has loaned a remarkable collection of works by Joan Miró, which are fundamental to understanding the relationship between primitive symbolic language and the master’s artistic research during the middle decades of the 20th century. The selection, which combines painting, works on paper and pieces linked to traditional material culture, highlights the dialogue that Miró established with archaic forms, elemental signs and ritual imagery.
The MAN exhibition, in collaboration with Sardinia’s archaeological museums, analyses how islands – as physical and symbolic spaces – have developed specific aesthetic idiosyncrasies and protective totemic figures. This cultural background is linked to the perspective of modern artists, from Gauguin to Miró, who were fascinated by archaic appeal, the aesthetics of primitivism and the desire to escape contemporary reality.
Fundació Miró Mallorca celebrates this new collaboration with a leading institution in Sardinia and reaffirms its commitment to the international dissemination of Joan Miró’s work, as well as to the promotion of research that enriches the interpretation of his legacy and the links that connect him to Mediterranean cultures.
MAN, a leading institution in Sardinia
The MAN – Museo d’Arte della Provincia di Nuoro is a leading public institution in Sardinia dedicated to the study, conservation and dissemination of modern and contemporary art. Opened in 1999 in a historic building in the centre of Nuoro, the museum has developed a unique cultural project based on expanding and caring for collections of artists from the late 19th century to the present day. Since 2004, it has been part of AMACI, the Italian association of contemporary art museums, and manages an extensive exhibition, educational and research programme. The MAN stands out for its vocation as an “open museum”, capable of combining memory and innovation and connecting local reality with international artistic practices.
