Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

From 4 to 6 March, three days of exhibitions, meetings, initiatives in person and online. The complete program on www.museocity.it, www.yesmilano.it e app.museocity.it with also some itinerary suggestions - Photo gallery

Milan, February 21 2021 – After two online editions, from 4 to 6 March, "Milano Museo city" returns to the public, the event promoted by the Municipality of Milan and created in collaboration with the Museocity association, created to rediscover and raise awareness of the richness of the artistic heritage of city ​​museums.

Over 90 public and private institutions are participating in the sixth edition of the event, art and history museums, scientific museums, house museums, artist archives, corporate archives and museums spread throughout the city and, for the first time , even beyond the city limits with the Municipalities of Bergamo and Brescia which have selected some of the most representative institutions of the territory.

From 4 March the museums involved will open their physical or virtual doors to the public, offering a program with hundreds of events including guided tours, workshops for children, conferences, meetings, extraordinary openings and special initiatives united by the underlying theme of this edition: "The art rooms". Attention will therefore be focused this year on the buildings that house the museums (public and private), described by their curators and directors.

"This new edition of Museo city is first and foremost an important opportunity to reopen for many art and culture spaces, public and private, large and small, which during the past two years have suffered from the forced absence of the public, a vital relationship and essential for every museum or exhibition space – declares the councilor for Culture Tommaso Sacchi –. Secondly, the forced transfer of the two previous editions online has allowed this year to develop a hybrid program also rich in web content. Finally – concludes councilor Sacchi – the Museum city model, so open and inclusive, has crossed the borders of our metropolitan city by including some important art and culture institutions of the cities of Bergamo and Brescia, which will be Italian capitals of culture in 2023 Two cities and two territories rich in history and culture, with which Milan has already collaborated in the last Christmas exhibition a Palazzo Marino".

Among the institutions present for the first time, in addition to those of Brescia and Bergamo, there are the Emilio Scanavino Archive, housed in an early 900th century building, once home to a well-known professional photocolor laboratory; the Negroni Archive, which offers an introductory course on bas-relief with practical exercise; the Moses Bianchi, Pompeo Mariani, Elisabetta Keller cultural association with the opening of Keller's former Atelier, now home to the archives of the three artists, and guided tours and daily conferences dedicated to a different artist; the Francesco Somaini sculptor Foundation, the sculptor's former atelier in a historic FAI building, recently inaugurated (September 2021), offers an exhibition, a conference and a digital activity; the Luciana Matalon Foundation, a space in the heart of Milan, dedicated to contemporary art, in which each part was designed and personalized by the artist (mirror ceiling, painted floor); the Officina Rancilio 1926, an ongoing project to discover the design objects kept in the city museums of Parabiago.

Like every year, the Museo city association directly takes care of and organizes some of the event's initiatives.

From 4 to 6 March the "Secret Museum" itinerary returns, curated by Federica Giacobello with the supervision of Gemma Sena Chiesa, dedicated to the "Art Rooms". Attention will be paid to the locations, historic or newly created buildings, which host the various participating institutions, but we will also focus on the exhibition rooms, we will discover new architectural and decorative details, and historical or contemporary installations. We will also talk about other "rooms", mostly simple laboratories, where the work of art was created. A widespread exhibition, therefore, between reality and metaphor.

On Saturday 5 March Palazzo Reale will host "The museum beneath the skin: the difference teaches", a conference curated by Anna Detheridge on innovation in post-Covid museums, with a debate that will propose best practices and food for thought on the theme of difference, accessibility and inclusiveness, starting from the assumption that to better understand the experience of others it will be necessary to rethink our relationship with ourselves.

A theme very close to that of the conference is treated in depth in the second issue "The museum for all. Research on access to Milanese museums" for people with sensory and cognitive disabilities which can be consulted at the participating institutions and online on the website of the the Museocity association.

Other initiatives worth mentioning include: the extraordinary openings of the Sala delle Capriate in Palazzo della Ragione (Bergamo) and the Casa Museo di Palazzo Tosio (Brescia); the guided tour of MUMAC – Gruppo Cimbali's coffee machine museum, which this year celebrates the tenth anniversary of its foundation; the laboratory proposed by the PIME Popolo e Culture Museum, in which the visitor experiences firsthand what it means to create a chamber of wonders; the Pirelli Foundation online game; the new temporary exhibition "The beginning of time. The spatialist research of Arnaldo Pomodoro" in the Maestro's studio promoted by the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation.