Within the renewed vision of the Museum of Cultures - increasingly focused on anthropological themes and on the narration of visions of art thanks to the languages of the contemporary - an interdisciplinary project takes shape, created in collaboration with the Public Art Office, the Museum of Natural History of Milan and the Planetarium of Milan. The rich calendar of events and initiatives will be linked to the theme of the rainbow, a natural phenomenon but also an archetypal symbol, whose thousand meanings have been investigated by mankind over the centuries.

The heart of the project is the exhibition "Rainbow: Rainbow: colors and wonders between myths, arts and science" at the Museo delle Culture; promoted by the Municipality of Milan | Culture, the exhibition is curated by Katya Inozemtseva with the collaboration of the conservatories of Mudec, Public Art, Museum of Natural History and Planetarium.

Open to the public from 17 February to 2 July 2023, the exhibition develops in the spaces on the first floor of the Mudec: after a complete immersion in the colors of the rainbow thanks to a site specific installation by the artist Cory Arcangel in the spaces of "cloud", the exhibition continues in the Focus Rooms, according to an essential set-up by Studio Grace.

The exhibited pieces, coming from the museum's collections as well as the result of international loans, allow the visitor to explore the multiple meanings of the rainbow, to know its origin and reflections in contemporary culture. Expression of different languages from anthropology to biology, from art to science, the objects illustrate ancient myths and new values of the iris between ancient and contemporary, inside and outside the Museum, also thanks to Public Art.

The project is inspired by the historic exhibition The Rainbow Show, set up in 1975 at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. The Californian exhibition was born from the thought of the African-American activist Angela Davis and in particular from the concept of the Rainbow Nation, as an ideal of racial integration, represented in the exhibition by Peace the way home (1978-2022), a large quilt hand-stitched, celebrating African-American culture, by actress and activist Val Gray Ward.