Milano: the new “Gestures and Processes” Gallery inaugurated at the Museo del Novecento

Il Museo del Novecento presents the Gallery "Gestures and Processes", the wing of the Permanent Collections dedicated to the last decades of the century, from the 60s to the 90s.

“Museums are a living body, which is continually renewed thanks to an incessant activity of conservation, research and study – states the Councillor for Culture Tommaso Sacchi –. It is precisely thanks to these activities and to a significant series of important donations and loans that the Museum of the Twentieth Century has already seen the reorganisation of the Gallery of Futurism in 2021, thus becoming the most important collection of futurist works in the world; that today we are opening the Gallery 'Gesti e Processi', which not only inaugurates an architectural dialogue between the Museum and the Cathedral of Milano, but also creates a different story of the second half of the twentieth century, the one that goes from the 60s to the 90s; that the 'Segno e Materia' Gallery, on the fifth floor of the Museum, is being re-arranged and will soon propose a new story of the 50s and 60s of the century. The Museum of the Twentieth Century, therefore, never stops renewing itself, to offer visitors an ever-changing perspective, a different slant, in order to continually reveal the meaning and beauty of its extraordinary Collection”.

There are many new features compared to the previous exhibition, starting with the broadening of the historical period taken into consideration, which now reaches up to the last decade of the twentieth century, also thanks to important donations received by the museum regarding fundamental works by the artists. Maurizio Cattelan, Liliana Moro, Stephen Arienti e Grazia Toderi. In addition to these, there are other donations such as that of Grace Varisco (protagonist of Kinetic Art) and the upcoming arrival of works of great importance such as The Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli by Henry Baj currently exhibited in the monographic exhibition dedicated to him at the Royal Palace of Milano.

The interpretation of the spaces that host the works is new because all the windows and views of the “Gesti e Processi” Gallery, on the fourth floor of the Museum of the Twentieth Century and corresponding to the entire second floor of the Royal Palace, have been opened allowing a panoramic view of the Cathedral of Milano and on the square of the same name. This conception of a building as a threshold, with the possibility of a view that also from the outside allows one to glimpse the interiors of the museum as already happens for Sala Fontana, realizes an intention already foreseen by the designer Italo Rota in conceiving a museum in such an urban context, and will find further continuity in the next development of the Museo del Novecento in the adjacent second tower of the Arengario, completing a spectacular architectural connection in the heart of the city of Milano.

The city itself inspires the choices of the exhibition itinerary, privileging moments in the history of Italian art that are precisely Milano has seen events of cultural and social importance of the highest order. Hence, the inclusion in the collection of famous shots of Ugo Mulas, which enters the museum permanently not only as a tribute to his authorship, but also as a photographic counterpoint in the interpretation of events such as “The funeral of the Nouveau Réalisme” (1970) or the life and work of Piero Manzoni and the protagonists of the artistic scene at the famous Bar Jamaica.

The entire introductory room of the tour is dedicated to Piero Manzoni, with his works accompanied by Mulas' photographs and a period film that underline the behavioural and histrionic dimension of his pioneering vision of an art that goes well beyond the perimeter of the painting or the completed form of the sculpture. This very attitude is emblematic of the period that is being represented in the “Gesti e Processi” Gallery, where the linguistic and creative “tear” of the artists has led modern art to overcome the conventionality of the object. Here is the happening of the protagonists of the Nouveau Realisme or the mechanical and electrical movement in the devices or in the proposal for interaction with the public in Programmed and Kinetic Art open up to new rituals and ways of experiencing. Likewise, the installations they are not contained in an environment but occupy and determine the exhibition spaces, building new relationships with visitors. The conceptual artwork invites reflections that are proposed in a broad path materialized in a hundred works, from the protagonists of Italian Pop to Arte Povera, from Analytical Painting to Transavanguardia, up to video experiments and the adoption of various ephemeral or changeable materials that the visitor can come across in the large rediscovered spaces of the Gallery.

The itinerary of the Museo del Novecento, which opens with the desire to transform the world proposed by the programmatic optimism of Futurism, now ends with an emblematic work by Maurizio Cattelan, that “Lullaby” which is almost a declared expression of the end of utopia in the dramatic and disillusioned collection and re-proposal of the rubble of the PAC destroyed by the 1993 attack.

The renewed itinerary of the “Gestures and Processes” Gallery also includes three environments, overlooking the internal side of the Palace, intended to host, in rotation, Focus dedicated to different artists or themes. Currently, one is dedicated to Grace Varisco (hero of Kinetic Art), one to Gabriele Devecchi and a third, thematic, dedicated to Conceptual Art with works by Giulio Paolini, Emilio Tadin, Omar Galliani, Save and others).

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