Two mouse museums inside milan’s fondazione prada
Inside Milan’s Fondazione Prada, Alex Da Corte pays homage to Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum (1965-1977) through a multitude of pop culture and art objects encased in a singular, panoramic glass pane. On view from September 18th, 2025, the exhibition and installation sit on the eighth floor of the Torre building within Fondazione Prada’s lot as part of Atlas, the foundation’s exhibition project presenting solo or comparative works by artists across the eight floors of the building. For the first time, visitors experience these two installations at once in the same space because the two mini museums – one by Claes Oldenburg and the other by Alex Da Corte – stand next to each other. When viewed from above, the structure housing the Swedish-born American sculptor’s collection is shaped like a cartoon mouse head and an early movie camera, drawn from his drawing named Geometric House.
In Alex Da Corte’s case, there’s a macabre twist: his structure looks like a cut-off left ear of the mouse, a reference to the episode of Vincent van Gogh’s life. Inside both of the mini museums, a collection of objects appeals to the visitors, reflecting on mass production and consumer culture as well as the ever-changing trends in pop culture. In an interview with designboom during the preview of Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022) inside Milan’s Fondazione Prada, Alex Da Corte tells us that he arranged the collection as a sort of self-portrait. When asked if they reflect his life, a peek into his daily practice, he shares with us: ‘I’m not interested in revealing a specific event or part of myself. I think viewers see what they see and find their own lives in the objects, whether or not they know the work’s source. We project meaning onto objects because they ground us and make a safe space.’
all images courtesy of Fondazione Prada | exhibition photos by Delfino Sisto Legnani – DSL Studio
Personal objects in varying color intensity for the exhibition
Alex Da Corte’s Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022) inside Milan’s Fondazione Prada mirrors the curation and artistic practice of Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum (1965-1977). The similarities occur in amassing and presenting mass-produced and pop-culture objects, but the saturation and shade of the objects seem shifted. It may be due to the aging of the objects, but in Claes Oldenburg’s space, the repertoire is hushed, earthy, wooden, domestic. In Alex Da Corte’s room, the colors are louder, the objects are familiar and recent, and the arrangement has a comic tinge. In terms of color, the Venezuelan-American artist explains to designboom that it is important in his practice.
‘Color for me is essential. Color relates to a psychological state. Colors chosen for products are meant to attract or repel. Depending on taste, you might dislike something just because of its color,’ he says. ‘When arranging things here, it’s often about color; painting in space with objects. Claes also had a perfect sense for color. His objects are rich, maybe a different tonality, but similarly colorful.’ Away from the shade, the technique in presenting the Mouse Museum collection inside Fondazione Prada links the artistic practice between the two artists. The order is not alphabetical, by material, or based on production year, yet in both museums, the items relate through a loosely associative sequence, relying mostly on visual similarities and suggestive connections.
exhibition view of Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022) by Alex Da Corte
Alex Da Corte mirrors Claes Oldenburg’s collecting practice
Playful personal objects show up in Alex Da Corte’s Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) inside Milan’s Fondazione Prada. Among them is a Harry Potter magic wand, a Bart Simpson thermos, kitchen utensils, a plastic beer pong cup, and a foam cast of Marcel Duchamp’s face. There’s also the ceramic-glazed Garfield statue, a yellow rooster with a tail made of quill feathers, wearable feet gloves that resemble real skin, beer bottles, brooms, a miniature disco ball, a blasted pumpkin, and perhaps the showstopper, a zombie-looking head atop a lamp base. These peculiar objects mirror the ones inside Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum: a rotting slice of pie, a balloon shaped like a human leg, an enlarged cluster of bananas, a giant ceramic ear, and even a miniaturized ladder.
‘Looking at Claes’s works today, I don’t know the objects, but I’m amused or reminded of something. I imagine where they came from and their function,’ Alex Da Corte shares with designboom. ‘My interest comes from thrift stores, where you find a fragment of an object and wonder about its function. Without its original purpose, it can have a new life. Seeing a second or third life for objects is exciting.’ For the artist, it feels like a dream come true seeing the objects collected by Claes Oldenburg for his Mouse Museum for the first time in Fondazione Prada. ‘I only knew them through photographs in the book, and those were in black and white. To experience the colors and textures and to see so many similarities is exciting. My interest is in hands, food, plastic, and even clay. There’s humor in the work, and I see a parallel there,’ he adds.
the exhibition and installation sit on the eighth floor of the Torre building within Fondazione Prada’s lot
The first time Alex Da Corte came across Claes Oldenburg’s works was around 25 years ago. ‘It was in my undergraduate library. I stumbled upon the book he made with his partner to mark the presentation of the Mouse Museum. I knew Claes’s work and his relationships to soft things, sculpture, and performance, but I didn’t know much about contemporary art. When I saw the Mouse Museum, I was taken by all it afforded an audience and how generous it was. Only today am I seeing the real one. For 25 years, I’ve been wondering about this work,’ he says.The artist created his Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) in 2022 for his survey exhibition ‘Mr. Remember,’ which is on view at the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, Denmark.
He recalls that when he was thinking about what a retrospective or a survey of his own work would look like and what it means to remember himself and the objects he had gathered over his life. ‘The person who did that so correctly was Claes. I thought, I can’t remake the whole museum; it’s too sacred. So I thought, I’ll cut off an ear: a little piece of me, a little piece of him,’ he shares. Mouse Museum (Van Gogh Ear) (2022) is inside the Torre within the lot of Milan’s Fondazione Prada, on the eighth floor. The public viewing begins from September 18th, 2025, where viewers can also visit Sueño Perro: Instalación Celuloide by De Alejandro G. Iñárritu, a cinematic and photographic exhibition that unveils and showcases previously hidden film materials and imagery by the Mexican filmmaker, which were preserved for 25 years in the film archives of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
among the objects are a Harry Potter magic wand and a foam cast of Marcel Duchamp’s face
the technique in presenting the Mouse Museum collection links the artistic practice between the two artists
everyday objects are also on view in the installation