Robert Wilson’s Final Artistic Project “Mother” Arrives in Rome
From 12 December to 18 January, Museo MAXXI will host Mother, the final artistic project created by the late Robert Wilson, transformed for Rome as an immersive, sensorial experience rather than a traditional exhibition. Conceived as a tribute to Wilson, who passed away in July 2025, the event is also presented symbolically as a meditation in the closing months of the Jubilee year, inviting visitors into a space of contemplation, silence and spiritual reflection.
Originally premiered at Milan’s Castello Sforzesco in Milan in 2025, Mother was Wilson’s encounter with the unfinished Pietà Rondanini by Michelangelo: a sculpture whose raw, incomplete surface became the emotional core of the installation, at MAXXI in a historic plaster cast. Wilson chose not to “stage” the masterpiece, but to frame it in light and music, allowing the audience to simply face the work and breathe with it. “It was like watching through an open door,” Wilson said of his first encounter with the Pietà.
A Unique and Immersive Experience
The Rome event will follow the original concept: a slow sequence of sculpted light, shadow and sound, accompanied by Stabat Mater by Arvo Pärt, whose minimal, sacred musical language echoes the emotional tension of Michelangelo’s composition. Across 30 minutes, the installation forms what curator Franco Laera calls “an opera totale”, a total artwork guiding audiences through a suspended space between sculpture, sound and inner experience.
Mother is designed to be lived rather than observed: visitors sit in silence and enter as a group, without cameras or phones, in order to preserve concentration and intimacy. The intention is to allow modern audiences – often hurried, distracted or overwhelmed – to rediscover slowness and interiority inside an artistic encounter.
Practical Information and Tickets
The event includes seven daily sessions, each lasting one hour, with an audience of up to 100 visitors per session. The ticket costs €5. Combined museum tickets will also be available (€15).
A Spiritual Farewell and Tribute
As the last creation completed before his death, Mother now reads as Wilson’s artistic farewell: an encounter between unfinished sculpture, suspended light, and the ancient voice of Pärt. It is also an encounter between eras, a Renaissance vision of grief, the modern ritual of silence, and the contemporary search for meaning.
In Rome, the installation becomes not only a tribute to Wilson, but also a reflective gesture at the end of a Jubilee year: a space where artistic contemplation overlaps with spiritual experience, and where, as Wilson suggested, the viewer is invited simply to “look, think, and dream.” ph: Lucie Jansch by SIAE 2025, courtesy Fondazione MAXXI
For more information about Robert Wilson’s Mother and to plan your visit, click Here