As part of the program for L’Aquila 2026, Italian Capital of Culture, the MuBAq – L’Aquila Children’s Museum presents *Germogliati semi*. A tribute to Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) on the 40th anniversary of his passing, this is the fourth event in the sixth edition of “Seminiamo Arte,” curated by Antonio Gasbarrini and Mariano Cipollini, and supported and promoted by the City of L’Aquila. The opening is scheduled for July 30 at 6:00 p.m.; the exhibition is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Additional special opening hours in August will be announced as they become available.

More than thirty Italian and international artists have been invited to participate with works and performances that are in perfect harmony with the revolutionary philosophy of Beuys’s “Social Sculpture, ” each interpreting in their own way the guiding principle that runs through Joseph Beuys’s entire body of work: DEFENSE OF NATURE. Sculptures, installations, and performances unfold within the natural setting ofthe medieval Celestine Botanical Garden, adjacent to the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, transforming the green space into a place for intimate engagement with Beuys’s thought and work and into an invitation for the public to actively participate—as co-protagonists, according to Beuys’s famous vision, in a “peaceful and pacifying” plastic mass in the making.

To round out the event, in early September 2026, an interdisciplinary seminar on Beuysian research and the state of the Botanical Garden, as well as a photographic exhibition of portraits of Beuys taken by Stefano Fontebasso De Martino at the Palazzetto dei Nobili in L’Aquila.