The "is back"Milano Art Week”, the week dedicated to contemporary art and languages ​​from 8 to 14 April.

This year's edition is characterized by a calendar full of activities and projects aimed at promoting a synesthetic experience between the arts, which will enrich the cultural panorama of the city with a multidisciplinary schedule of exhibitions and collateral events. With more than 180 events on the calendar, over 110 exhibitions and 140 subjects involved, the program of Milano Art Week 2024 embraces the multidimensionality of artistic expression, actively involving artists and the public through exhibitions, talks, meetings and projects, in which the protagonists are the Civic Museums and the exhibition venues of the Municipality of Milano, together with the entire fabric made up of institutions, foundations, galleries, hybrid spaces and non-profit organizations in the city.

Saturday April 13th Milano Art Week, thanks to support from Banca Generali, offers all citizens and visitors free entry to the PAC Pavilion of Contemporary Art: a special opportunity to visit “RACE TRAITOR”, the solo show dedicated to the work of Adrian Piper (New York, 1948), winner of the Lion of 'Gold as best artist at the Venice Biennale 2015.

The exhibition is the first European retrospective after over twenty years and retraces sixty years of the artist's career, with important international loans from the most prestigious museums, including MoMA and Guggenheim in New York, MoMA in San Francisco, MCA in Chicago, MOCA in Los Angeles and Tate Modern in London. The works on display bring out the analysis of the "visual pathology" of racism, which Piper - who established herself as a conceptual, minimalist and performer artist in the New York art scene of the late Sixties - recounts through installations, videos, photographs, paintings and drawings, the result of his research on the image of African American people determined by society and by the many widespread stereotypes.

Always at CAP, on 12 April (19 pm) there will be a talk on the artistic research of Adrian Piper with Vid Simoniti, author of “Artists Remake the World” (Yale, 2023) and professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, and the presentation of “ Escape to Berlin”, Adrian Piper's autobiography in English and Italian versions.

Milano Art Week kicks off the week of events at the MUDEC Museo delle Culture on Sunday 7 April, at 18pm, with the screening of the documentary "The anarchic art of Enrico Baj" (2024), produced by 3D Produzioni in collaboration with RAI Cultura. Over twenty years after Baj's death and one hundred years after his birth, the documentary takes us to the house in Vergiate, the fascinating 20s residence in the province of Varese which was a real factory for Baj, in which the wife Roberta, who safeguards the archives and memory of her husband, guides the viewer to discover the man and the artist. The event is open to the public upon reservation.

Among the main offices of Milano Art Week the Museum of the Twentieth Century, which on April 10th inaugurates four projects: “VOL. XXXI: Futurism Drama” (until 12 May), a site-specific intervention by the Cypriot artist Haris Epaminonda, promoted by the Henraux Foundation and curated by Edoardo Bonaspetti, which opens an unprecedented dialogue between the masterpieces of the early twentieth century in the prestigious Gallery of Futurism, a selection of works by Medardo Rosso – a reference figure for the Futurist avant-garde – and the artist's research; “MAGALI REUS. ARNALDO POMODORO PRIZE FOR SCULPTURE” (until June 30), a focus exhibition dedicated to the Dutch artist Magali Reus, curated by Federico Giani, winner of the VII edition of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Prize for Sculpture; “Portrait of the City (20/20.000HZ)” (until 30 June), large multi-channel audio-video installation by the Masbedo duo (Iacopo Bedogni and Niccolò Massazza), curated by Cloe Piccoli, which talks about the cultural revival of Milano: from the electronic music of the RAI Phonology Studio, from the inventions of Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna, the gaze broadens to architecture (BBPR), art (Lucio Fontana), cinema (Michelangelo Antonioni), graphics; and ARCHIVE_001.

From 1940 to today – Snapshots from the art galleries of Milano” (until June 30), edited by Mariuccia Casadio, the first chapter of a research that intends to reconstruct over seventy years of history of the private galleries of Milano with their artistic choices, international relations, avant-garde events, meetings with artists; the exhibition is promoted by MAC – Milano Art Community, the network that brings together the most important galleries and institutions in the city of Milano and which this week also includes dedicated projects, extraordinary openings, meetings and guided tours in all its locations.

“Beyond Boundaries” will open at the Fabbrica del Vapore on April 9th ​​at 17pm, an exhibition curated by Nicholas Vamvouklis which includes paintings, videos, sculptures and installations by the six artists (Monia Ben Hamouda, Milica Jankovic, João Gomes Gago, Ingrid Bjørnaali, Ronnie Danaher, Domenika Georgiou) who participated in the artist residency project held in January at 180 events on the calendar, over 110 exhibitions and 140 subjects involved in collaboration with BJCEM. Also in the Fabbrica del Vapore, the exhibition “Ugo La Pietra. Living means being at home" (until 21 April) collects research works relating to the urban territory of Milano, created between the 1960s and today, which testify to La Pietra's ability to decode and therefore read the contradictions and constraints of our urbanized society, in order to achieve the habitability of collective space.

The MUDEC Museum of Cultures hosts “Exposure. Art, Cultures and Fashion inside and outside the shop window” (until 8 June), a reflection through the work of contemporary artists on the traditional concept of the shop window and its centrality in exhibition projects. Also at MUDEC, on the occasion of Milano Art Week will hold the world premiere screening of “The Rebirth of Venus” (2024), an extraordinary project promoted by the City of Naples and Napoli Contemporanea, produced by 3D Produzioni in collaboration with Sky Arte (Wednesday 10 April at 19pm, free admission upon reservation). The documentary tells the story of the night of 11 July 2023, when Naples was illuminated by the fire of "La Venere degli stracci" by Michelangelo Pistoletto, installed only two weeks earlier in Piazza del Municipio. The film closely follows the process of reconstruction of the sculpture until the inauguration of the new work, which will remain as a legacy to the city. The event will be introduced by a conversation with Michelangelo Pistoletto and the critic Vincenzo Trione.

Public art a Milano manifests itself in multiple forms throughout Milano Art Week 2024, highlighting the vitality and diversity of the city's art scene. Among the most significant initiatives, “POSTERINTHECITY” stands out (until April 21st), a project by Pasquale Leccese created by the Art in Public Spaces Office – Milano Public Art, a few months after his death: hundreds of works by artists Sylvie Fleury, Richard Prince, Giuseppe Abbati, Jamel Shabazz, Fosco Valentini, Gabriele Picco, Marta Dell'Angelo, Marlene Dumas, Rosemarie Trockel, in format posters, will be displayed throughout the city helping to unexpectedly spread artistic images in streets, squares, public parks, on media usually used for advertising. The creation of neighborhood "landmark" murals also continues with a new intervention in Affori, in the square of the Affori Centro metro station, which will be unveiled during Milano Art Week.

The new mural, signed by Nabla and Zibe, was born from a long journey of sharing and listening to the neighborhood. Urban walks and street art tours will also offer an engaging experience discovering public art in urban contexts: through guided tours, murals, poster art and graffiti will be explored, discovering the history, meaning and artists behind the works. Succo d'Arte offers a special tour to discover the public and participatory art project of the open-air museum of Or.Me (14 April) and to understand the true meaning of the urban regeneration of the Ortica district. The Atelier Spazio Xpò Association and FAI youth delegation Milano propose a Tour of the Muriliberi of via Pontano (13 and 14 April) in the "Tunnel Boulevard" railway underpasses between via Padova and viale Monza.

Milano Art Week also goes to the cinema. For a week, in the theaters of Anteo, before the films, spectators will be able to be introduced to the world of art and the contemporary through interviews with 5 great protagonists: Massimiliano Gioni, Shirin Neshat, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Lia Rumma. 3-minute pills to bring the general public closer to the meaning of what Milano Art Week is bringing to town. An Arts For_ project in collaboration with Artbox and 3D Produzioni.

Awarded during the miart fair, the Orbital Culture Award – Nexi Group this year it is created in collaboration with the Municipality of Milano on the occasion of Milano Art Week. After the Uffizi in Florence, the second edition of the award exclusively dedicated to photography in all its forms is dedicated to the Castello Sforzesco in Milano. An artist, selected from those represented by the galleries of the Established and Portal sections of the fair, will be commissioned to do a documentation work of the museum complex, with an award of 10.000 euros.

The Milanese cultural panorama also comes alive with a series of projects and initiatives organized by the many institutions, museums and organizations in the city that participate in the official schedule.

Pirelli Hangar Bicocca hosts the monographic exhibition “Call to rally. Sisters. Moths and flames. Bones of lionesses, stones and snakes" dedicated to the work of Chiara Camoni. The exhibition brings together the largest corpus of Chiara Camoni's works ever presented and, together with a series of new productions, gives life to an architecture of community and contemplation, inspired in its forms by the late Renaissance Italian garden and ancient amphitheaters . Pirelli HangarBicocca also hosts the retrospective of Nari Ward's work "Ground Break" which brings together for the first time a selection of works that investigates Ward's research with performativity and projects focused on collaboration, accompanied by the performance calendar, "Groundings", on the occasion of the exhibition (13 and 14 April, at 15.30 pm).

Nicola Trussardi Foundation will inhabit the urban spaces of the city with the project “ITALIA 70 – I NUOVI MOSTRI” (from 8 April), an explosion of images created by 70 contemporary artists working in Italy, curated by Massimiliano Gioni. Great masters and emerging talents – from Yuri Ancarani and Giorgio Andreotta Calò to Francesco Vezzoli and Monica Bonvicini, from Vanessa Beecroft and Tomaso Binga to Giulio Paolini and Giuseppe Penone, from Guglielmo Castelli and Francesco Clemente to Giulia Cenci and Paola Pivi, up to Giulia Andreani and Petrit Halilaj just to name a few – were invited to produce an image to be reproduced on hundreds of posters that will cover the streets and squares of Milano from one end of the city to the other, from the Monumental Cemetery to the Historic Centre, from City Life to Porta Romana.

Michele Coppola, Arturo Galansino, Nicola Ricciardi, Giovanna Amadasi, Lia Rumma and a special remote contribution by Anselm Kiefer, will be the protagonists of a conversation at Gallerie d'Italia, organized by Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and dedicated to the great German artist Anselm Kiefer as part of the exhibition recently inaugurated in Florence (12 April, at 11am, free entry upon reservation).

Three-year Milano celebrates the work of Alessandro Mendini with a double homage to the architect and theorist who marked the revolutions of thought and customs of the twentieth century, in collaboration with Fondation Cartier and Archivio Alessandro Mendini. Always triennial Milano, in collaboration with the Art in Public Spaces Office of the Municipality of Milano, on the occasion of Milano Art Week, hosts a tribute to Dan Graham, one of the most important artists internationally. Visible and accessible, the pavilions - works created since the 1980s, at the intersection of art and architecture -, built in steel and glass, create an environmental dimension that challenges the viewer's perception and his relationship with space.

In this edition of FOG, the visionary Spanish group El Conde de Torrefiel presents an audio guide of stories and characters for an individual walk in the Monumental Cemetery of Milano, in which participants will discover what secrets are hidden in this sleepy city by following an eclectic audio that will invite them to explore a setting capable of being disturbing and exciting, in which numerous lives and stories have taken place over the centuries.

All ICA Foundation the “Erika Verzutti. Notizia” curated by Chiara Nuzzi and Alberto Salvadori, the first Milanese solo exhibition of the Brazilian artist (8 April, 20.30 pm) and “Formafantasma. La Casa Dentro” (8 April, 18.00 pm) which presents a selection of unpublished works to build a reflection around the idea of ​​the home, explored as a physical space and as a complex set of human and thematic relationships linked to personal identity and memory collective.

Among other initiatives, the inauguration of “The Convivial Laboratory” at BASE Milano (12 April), with the presentation of the installation “TALAMO” by the architectural duo Lemonot (Sabrina Morreale and Lorenzo Perri), in collaboration with Xavier Madden and Katja Banović; the monographic exhibition dedicated to David Horvitz hosted by BiM (12 April – 30 June), which reflects on the distance between places and people through a variety of media; in addition to the retrospective on Pino Pascali (until 23 September), Fondazione Prada will propose a conversation between Mark Godfrey and Peter Fischli (14 April, 16.00 pm) followed by the screening of the documentary “Pino” by Walter Fasano.

During Milano Art Week is also born TOILETPAPER APARTMENT, a new space that opens on April 12th in Via Balzaretti 8, presenting the original project resulting from the meeting between the visionary world of TOILETPAPER (Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari) and the cinematographic imagination of Alex Prager, American artist, director and screenwriter .
Finally, an exceptional number of galleries in the city participate with dedicated projects and special openings, talks and visits. Over forty exhibition locations that generate a very dense map distributed in the 9 Municipalities, enriching this Milano Art Week of a lively, accessible and inclusive program.

Complete program on milanoartweek.it