The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, has never looked like this. Papal vestments preside over a replica of the Ponte Sant’Angelo. Sicilian folk music drifts through rooms drenched in Baroque gold. A gown embroidered with Botticelli’s Primavera hangs feet from a generative AI video installation. This is “From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce & Gabbana,” and it is the closest Miami has ever come to Rome.
Following sold-out runs in Milan, Paris, and the Eternal City itself, the Exhibition has crossed the Atlantic for the first time. It landed not in New York or Los Angeles but in the Miami Design District, inside the newly expanded ICA Miami. Curated by Florence Müller with scenography by Agence Galuchat and produced by MARI, it brings together more than 300 pieces from the house's archives and recent collections. No white cubes here. Instead, a narrow hallway lined with mannequins beneath a papal robe. A room dedicated to Luchino Visconti's The Leopard. Another that channels the gilded hush of Teatro alla Scala.
Rome on the Water
The Miami edition introduces new galleries inspired by Dolce & Gabbana's Alta Moda and Alta Sartoria collections presented in Rome in 2025. Those shows took over the Roman Forum and Castel Sant'Angelo, models descending stone ramparts like figures from another century. That same spirit now fills this museum by the bay. Ecclesiastical grandeur meets imperial symbolism. Embroidery, metallic threads, pearls, and crystals reconstruct the Eternal City's layered history, sacred and spectacular, ancient and right now.
One gallery reimagines the Bridge of Sant'Angelo. Its ten angel statues have been replaced by ten mannequins draped in white and gold. A wide screen plays footage of the election of Pope Leo XIV. The effect is transportive, devotional, just the right side of surreal. It is also, unmistakably, Dolce & Gabbana.
The Hand and the Machine
Dolce & Gabbana have never been shy about their devotion to Italian artisanship. They wear it on their sleeve. Literally, in the case of the Sicilian cart motifs and gold leaf embroideries that have become house signatures. “From the Heart to the Hands” puts that devotion front and center with galleries dedicated to the tailors, seamstresses, and embroiderers who turn sketches into sculpture.
But the Exhibition also pushes the idea of handmade into digital territory. Five contemporary visual artists: Quayola, Alberto Maria Colombo, Obvious, Vittorio Bonapace, and Felice Limosani have created works in dialogue with the fashion on display. Video installations, generative artworks, and digital environments explore craftsmanship, metamorphosis, memory, and what happens when human gesture meets code.
