iGallerie d'Italia MilanoCentro Storico / Piazza della Scala
LIBERE! 1946-2026. Le conquiste delle donne
Photographs from major archives chart 80 years of Italian women's gains, from the 1946 vote through work, feminism, divorce and abortion rights, to contemporary artists.
More in Milan
In Milan in 1948, Tino Petrelli photographed an elderly woman being walked to the polling station on Via delle Forze Armate. Two years earlier, on 2 June 1946, nearly 13 million Italian women had voted in a national election for the first time, and that is where this show starts.
About 50 photographs from Intesa Sanpaolo's Publifoto archive, the Contrasto agency and the archives of Paola Agosti and Marcella Campagnano fill the Sala delle Colonne. You walk forward through the decades: rice workers after the war, students outside a Milan school in 1958, women at the Beatles' Milan concert, the 1969 Women's Day march, the fights over divorce and abortion. Panels mark each law as it changes. It ends with a projection of work by contemporary women artists.
It is a show of documentary pictures and captions, made for reading as you go. Tickets are €12, free for under-26s and on the first Sunday of the month, and the Gallerie d'Italia app has a digital guide.
Look for
Women voting in Massalengo, 17 March 1946
The opening Publifoto image shows women at the administrative elections near Lodi, casting their first ballots months before the national vote.
Tino Petrelli, Via delle Forze Armate, 1948
An elderly woman is escorted to a Milan polling station to cast her vote.
Angelo Novi, Milan, March 1958
Female students stand in front of the Civica Scuola Alessandro Manzoni.
Women's Day march, Milan, 8 March 1969
Publifoto's shot of the International Women's Day march through Milan, the year after adultery stopped being prosecutable.
Paola Agosti, Rome, 1977
Demonstrators gather outside the courthouse during the trial of the men accused of raping Claudia Caputi.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want paintings: this is about 50 documentary photographs with panels.
With kids
Entry is free for anyone under 26, and the museum runs guided visits for school groups.
Also at Gallerie d'Italia Milano
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- LIBERE! 1946-2026. Le conquiste delle donneGianni Berengo Gardin / Contrasto
- Un Tiziano per MilanoCourtesy of Museo Poldi Pezzoli
- Pina Bausch, Le Sacre du printempsCourtesy of Museo Teatrale alla Scala
- 1946, La Scala rinasceCourtesy of Museo Teatrale alla Scala
- Gallerie d'Italia MilanoJwslubbock / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Museo Poldi PezzoliPaolobon140 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Teatrale alla ScalaDaniel Case / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Palazzo CitterioGiovanni Dall'Orto / Wikimedia Commons
- Museo Bagatti ValsecchiMelancholia~itwiki / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0