Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

The Artist's Walls project, in its fifth edition, embraces the program of Milan is Memory "From the Villages to the City, from the City to the Neighborhoods"  
Councilor Romani: "An opportunity to reflect on the history of our city and plan its future together" 

Photos of artist walls (credit Cosimo Filippini) 

Exhibition documents 

 Milan, 13 May 2023 – Art and history intertwine at the Cittadella degli Archives and the result is a fascinating story of the centenary of the last great expansion of the Municipality of Milan, with the aggregation of the eleven villages that surrounded the city center. The year was 1923 when, with a Royal Decree of 2 September, the complex and long process of aggregation of Affori, Chiaravalle, Musocco, Lambrate, Greco, Crescenzago, Vigentino, Baggio, Niguarda, Gorla-Precotto and Trenno in Milan was concluded , which effectively led to the doubling of its urban area and a profound transformation of its identity. 

  
A centenary that the Administration has chosen to celebrate, within the rich program of initiatives entitled “From the Villages to the City, from the City to the Neighborhoods”, with the exhibition “In Archive. La Più Grande Milano” and with the Artist's Walls project - now in its fifth edition this year -, the inaugurations of which will be held today, Saturday 13 May, at 17pm in via Gregorovius 15, in the presence of the Councilor for Services civics Gaia Romani, of the President of Municipality 9 Anita Pirovano and of the delegate for the coordination of Milan is Memoria Luca Gibillini.  
   
“Milan is a city of many different souls and facets – states councilor Romani – and these two projects give us the opportunity to enhance the identity of each neighbourhood, where a renewed role, with greater strength than in the past, is played from the Municipalities. In this project the Citadel of the Archives was invaluable for the research work on the material kept and made available, which today allows us not only to carry out another step in the redevelopment of this place through the murals but also to reflect on the history of our city and plan its future together. Promoting moments of community, such as those that this project will generate, is essential for Milan to continue on its path as an international metropolis, without giving up its true soul."     
   
Exhibition spaces are dedicated to each village which has now become a district of the city which - with a rich documentary heritage, made up of period maps, coats of arms and authentic papers - will tell the historical peculiarities relating above all to the period of aggregation, introduced by the historical curator, Professor Antonino De Francesco of the Department of Historical Studies of the University of Milan.   
  
The exhibition, framed within the framework of "From the Villages to the City, from the City to the Neighborhoods" of Milan is Memory and created in collaboration with Municipality 9, also confirms the didactic nature of Cittadella's activities, having entrusted the general curatorship and graphic design to interns from the University of Milan together with the girls and boys of two first classes of the Imagination and Work School.     
   
Promoted, however, by the non-profit cultural association Isorropia Homegallery, under the supervision of the curator Rossella Farinotti, is the Artist's Walls project, inspired this year by the centenary of the aggregation of the eleven municipalities from which the title "Dai Borghi" takes its name. to the City, from the City to the Neighborhoods". Six hundred square meters of mural art along the entire Via Monterotondo created by fourteen artists, Antonella Aprile, Giuseppe Buzzotta, Davide Genna, Coquelicot Mafille, Leila Mirzhakani, Silvia Negrini, Silvia Paci, Aronne Pleuteri, Shanti Ranchetti, Valdrin Taqui, Luca Zarattini , Gabriele Colletto, Lorenzo Di Lucido, Alexander Vinogradov.   
  
“This year too, the artists invited to interpret the history of Milan have returned tangible narratives, episodes, details and visions, mediating between the story of the selected neighborhoods and their personal aesthetic approach in a perfect dialogue – states the curator Rossella Farinotti . 
 
Among the many projects that followed the aggregations of the eleven villages were the foundation of the University, the new Cà Granda Hospital in Niguarda, the construction of the Arengario in Piazza Duomo, the donation of the Palazzo dell'arte now Triennale, the closure of the Navigli, all events portrayed and told by the murals. Each aggregated municipality brought with it its own history into the new metropolis, sometimes thousands of years old like Chiaravalle with its Cistercian water meadows, other times more recent but world-famous like Baggio with the expedition of General Nobile.   
  
This year too, the intent is to redevelop the enormous Cittadella area through art, once again confirming the municipal archive as a creative incubator, an external museum that communicates to the city.   
The urban redevelopment project started in 2015 continues, curated by Rossella Farinotti, which saw the involvement of more than 70 artists - of different generations, artistic approach and origin, but all linked to the city of Milan - invited to intervene on the facade external and, subsequently, thanks to the first project created by Vedovamazzei with the permanent public work “La città che sale. Homage and Boccioni” also through site specific projects within Cittadella.     
  
The artists and works:   
· Antonella Aprile: Trenno - the Aldo Aniasi Park   
· Giuseppe Buzzotta: Gorla-Precotto - the Naviglio Martesana   
· Davide Genna: Niguarda – The New Hospital of Cà Granda   
· Coquelicot Mafille: Musocco – The Major Cemetery and the invocation of Antonio Bezzola   
· Leila Mirzhakani: Greco - Greco's map in the Beruto Plan 1889   
· Silvia Negrini: Chiaravalle - The Abbey and the meadows   
· Silvia Paci: Baggio – The departure of General Nobile's airship   
· Aronne Pleuteri: Crescenzago – The countryside and Magneti Marelli   
· Shanti Ranchetti: Vigentino – The Prada Foundation   
· Valdrin Taqui: Lambrate – La Innocenti – Lambretta   
· Luca Zarattini: Affori - The Affori musical band   
· Gabriele Colletto: The University of Milan   
· Lorenzo Di Lucido: The Arengario   
· Alexander Vinogradov: The Milan Triennale.   
  
The Cittadella degli Archives was founded in 2011 as a new archive center of the Municipality of Milan in via Gregorovius 15 - Niguarda/Bicocca area. It currently holds approximately 40 linear km of funds in a fully mechanized system (out of 70 available), hosting more than 200.000 folders for a total of approximately two million files and files, managed by a special archivist, Eustorgio, a latest generation robot equipped of artificial intelligence. Capable of automatically extracting the units present in each of the eight long steel aisles of its warehouse, Eustorgio contributes to making the Citadel one of the largest mechanized archives in Europe. Every week around 500 new conservation units arrive here from the various offices of the Municipality: the documents are thus cleaned and reconditioned in new folders, marked with barcodes identifying the contents and inserted into the Eustorgio database through optically readable scanners. Another 40 linear km of traditional archives are then preserved in an old multi-storey building, once used as a silo for vehicles and now converted to archival use through the installation of shelving. Overall, therefore, the Cittadella center today holds around 500.000 folders. The dating of the preserved papers starts from 1802, the year from which the so-called "Historical Fund" began which collects the documentation up to 1927 and which is housed partly at the Sforzesco Castle, where the Civic Historical Archive is located, and partly at the Citadel, upon formal authorization from the Archive Superintendency of Lombardy. Activated in 2012 and opened to the public in 2016, Cittadella boasts a consultation room and a very modern scanning room for the digitization of archival funds. Digitalization certainly represents the main challenge in the future of Cittadella. In this regard, a process of scanning the paperwork requested "on demand" by the Administration offices and external users has been started, which has as its objective the preservation of the inevitable deterioration of paper and the widest possible consultation for all.  
  
Isorropia Homegallery is a non-profit cultural association, based in Milan. The association deals with the promotion and diffusion of art, in all its forms, allowing knowledge of the most contemporary phenomena, which manifest themselves through multidisciplinary methods (from visual to multimedia art). The association's aims are pursued through the creation and organization of events, exhibitions and initiatives aimed at raising public awareness of the world of art. The promotion of artists, mainly emerging and young, but also established, is carried out through the subsidy and support of their projects also resorting to collaboration with the galleries that represent them, encouraging meetings and the mutual exchange of experiences. To date, over 30 exhibitions have been organised, almost all visible with photos and projects in 3DTour and on place