According to The Art Newspaper, Milan’s Museo delle Culture, a museum for non-European art, is forecast to open in October 2014. It is a project which has so far cost the city €60 million, and has been in the pipeline since 1999. In the meantime, the museum already received the nickname Il Quai Branly di Milano.
The museum, designed by the British architect David Chipperfield, will be a joint venture with the city of Milan overseeing the museum’s permanent collection, whilst a private company is to be in control of the institution’s commercial enterprises, education programme and the organisation of two annual temporary exhibitions. When the museum does open its doors to the public, it is to house 780m2 of permanent exhibition space and 1,500m2 of temporary exhibition space, enabling it to showcase a great variety of non-European works ranging in origin from pre-Columbian to modern and contemporary art – and of course also African art. The director of the permanent exhibition, Marina Pugliese, an art historian and also the director of Milan’s museum for Italian Modern art, says she wants the collection “to create a multidisciplinary and multicultural dialogue with contemporary culture”. The museum’s opening temporary show will be dedicated to the many international exhibitions held in Milan between 1850 and 1950, which introduced non-European art and ideas to the city.
Does anyone know more about Milan’s African art holdings ? (Update) A reader informed me it mainly consists of the former private collection of Ezio Bassani.
