From Nuremberg spectacles to Easy Rider: Rome tells the history of eyewear
The touring exhibition The Lens of Time comes to Rome's Palazzo Piacentini from 14 October – for the first time with a dedicated chapter on eyewear in cinema.
Symbolic image · Photo: Matti Airaksinen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Glasses as cultural history: under the title "The Lens of Time – Gli occhiali dalle origini al cinema", the Italian optical manufacturers' association ANFAO is staging an exhibition from 14 to 30 October 2026 at Palazzo Piacentini in Rome, home of the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy. According to the agency AgenziaCult, the opening was scheduled for 5pm on Tuesday, 13 October. The partner is the eyewear museum in Pieve di Cadore; the curators are Alessandra Cusinato and Daniela Zambelli.
According to the art portal Exibart, five sections lead from the first vision aids of the 13th century through the 19th century and 20th-century fashion and design to contemporary art. Exhibits include late-17th-century tortoiseshell spectacles from Nuremberg, an Italian boxwood case from 1687, a French ivory lorgnette and cat-eye frames from the 1960s and 1970s. The finale is a resin artwork encasing original glasses.
New in Rome is a chapter on eyewear in film, developed with Steve Della Casa of the Cineteca Nazionale. According to Finestre sull'Arte, it includes the Ray-Ban Olympian worn by Peter Fonda in Easy Rider (1969), Persol frames worn by Marcello Mastroianni in La dolce vita, a Lozza model chosen by Brigitte Bardot and a frame owned by Federico Fellini in 1978. The show, which began in Venice in 2025, then moves on to the MIDO fair in Milan (6–8 February 2027). ANFAO president Lorraine Berton said it aims to honour the history of Italian eyewear "and, at the same time, look to the future".