Three museums in and around Turin have joined forces to mark the centenary of Marisa Merz, the only woman among the Arte Povera artists, with a single exhibition in three acts. "Marisa Merz – La danza delle ore" (The Dance of the Hours) opened on 29 October at the Castello di Rivoli, the Fondazione Merz and GAM, the city's civic gallery of modern and contemporary art, and runs until 4 April 2027.

Each venue takes a different angle on an artist who worked in sculpture, drawing, painting, video and installation, often using fragile, domestic materials such as copper wire, wax and clay. At the Castello di Rivoli, curators Francesco Manacorda and Marianna Vecellio centre the show on the reconstruction of "E il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare", an immersive environment Merz first presented at the Tucci Russo gallery in Turin in 1980 and restaged at the Venice Biennale the same year, shown alongside work by ten contemporary women artists.

The Fondazione Merz chapter, organised by Beatrice Merz and Sébastien Delot, follows the artist's working process and her feel for materials, while GAM, under Chiara Bertola and Chiara Parisi, treats the home as studio and laboratory — the setting in which Merz, who was born in Turin in 1926 and died in 2019, made art from everyday life. The three-part itinerary is completed by a new film and series of photographs by Tacita Dean, who was invited into Merz's Turin home-studio to record its light and memory.

Merz won the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 2013 Venice Biennale, yet her reputation has long stood in the shadow of her husband, Mario Merz. The centenary project, staged under the patronage of Italy's Ministry of Culture with support from the Fondazione CRT, sets out to give her a fuller, more complex portrait. A ticket bought at one venue gives reduced entry to the other two, and free shuttle buses link the three sites during the Artissima fair weekend.