CLEVELAND, Ohio — The hits just keep coming for the Cleveland Museum of Art.
After a streak of crowd-pleasing exhibitions that have spanned everything from Japanese art and rock photography to high-concept modernism, CMA’s latest show turns the spotlight on Italy’s most enduring export: fashion.
Opening Sunday, Nov. 9, “Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses” is the museum’s largest fashion exhibition to date — and one of its most ambitious cross-disciplinary undertakings ever.
The show stitches together more than a century of design with centuries of influence, tracing the through line between Italian Renaissance art and modern couture.
More than 80 unique ensembles and garments and 40 jewelry pieces from icons like Versace, Valentino, Armani, Ferragamo and Gucci are displayed in conversation with the museum’s world-renowned collection of early Italian paintings, sculpture and decorative arts.
It’s a literal and figurative dialogue between brushstroke and hemline, between what hung in Florence’s palaces and what has strutted down Milan’s catwalks — glamour and glitz, personified.
Curated by Darnell-Jamal Lisby, CMA’s associate curator of fashion, “Renaissance to Runway” invites visitors to see history reflected in haute couture — not as an echo, but as an ongoing dialogue.
“It’s about cultural preservation and reinvention,” Lisby said in a statement. “Italian designers have long looked to the past not to replicate it, but to reimagine it.”
Some of the pairings are breathtaking.
A burgundy velvet gown by Donatella Versace glimmers with metallic thread and gems, recalling the opulence of 16th-century textile design — the same kind of luxury immortalized in Renaissance portraiture.
Alberta Ferretti’s fall 2015 ensemble channels the evolution of lace collars from the partlets and ruffs of the 1500s.
And Ferragamo’s 2023 “Jewel Sandal,” created under Maximilian Davis, riffs on a golden original the designer made for a client in 1956, marrying historical ornamentation with modern ease.
The exhibition also features pieces by Blumarine’s Nicola Brognano, who looked to angels and sacred art for his feathered “Evening Dress and Wings” and Armani, whose 2018 Privé cape ripples with plumed layers — a nod to the sprezzatura (effortless grace) of Renaissance style.
Jewelry houses get their due as well.
Buccellati’s “Violante Pendant Brooch,” with its intricate geometry and multicolored golds, was inspired by the architecture of Renaissance palaces.
Bvlgari’s 1984 Medusa necklace ties myth and mastery together, its engraved sardonyx centerpiece invoking both Greek mythology and Caravaggio’s famous depiction of the Gorgon.
What makes “Renaissance to Runway” feel so alive is its sense of continuum. The exhibition doesn’t relegate the Renaissance to a gilded past; it threads it directly into our present.
The fabrics, feathers and flourishes on display feel as relevant to today’s red carpet as they do to the frescoes and canvases that inspired them.
And because this is Cleveland, where art openings have a knack for turning into full-on events, CMA is making sure opening weekend goes big.
On Friday, Nov. 7, the museum hosts “MIX: Renaissance to Revolution” — a celebration themed around Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” era. DJ Lily Jade and DJ Black Unicorn will spin disco and house tracks inspired by “Queen Bey” herself, with guests encouraged to show up in glam looks worthy of the Italian runway or the dance floor.
The programming continues with a Tuesday, Dec. 2 lunchtime lecture, “Coloring ‘Renaissance to Runway’: Fashioning Red in Italian Fashion,” led by Lisby. It explores the history of red — the dye of power, luxury, and seduction — from the Renaissance kermes beetle to contemporary Valentino gowns.
A lavish 200-page exhibition catalogue accompanies the show, art directed by former Vogue Italia creative Luca Stoppini. It includes essays from fashion scholars, curators, and critics like Matteo Augello, Alessandra Arezzi Boza and Luke Meagher (@HautLeMode), along with digital installations by Francesco Carrozzini and Henry Hargreaves that interpret the exhibition’s themes through photography and film.
All together, “Renaissance to Runway” is more than a fashion exhibition. It’s a meditation on legacy — how Italian creativity has endured, evolved, and continued to seduce the world through beauty and craft. It also reinforces something Cleveland art lovers already know: that CMA isn’t just keeping pace with the world’s great museums; it’s setting its own rhythm.
Tickets are required for the exhibit, on sale now at clevelandart.org. The show runs through Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026.
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