Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) is most famous for the huge goth spider sculptures she created in honor of her mother, a tapestry dealer who died when Bourgeois was 20. Bourgeois had been studying mathematics, but switched to art, graduating from the Sorbonne in 1935. She served many apprenticeships in Paris, opened her own gallery, and sought to master new techniques. The sculptures came in the late 1940s, after Bourgeois had relocated, in 1938, to New York City with her husband, the art professor Robert Goldwater. “Sculpture is an exorcism,” she once said. “When you are really depressed and have no other way out except suicide, sculpture will get you out of it.” At the Galleria Borghese, 20 of the artist’s sculptures will inhabit one of Italy’s most impressive gallery spaces. —Elena Clavarino