Museo del Novecento

The Museo del Novecento is a museum of twentieth-century art located in Milan, in Lombardy in northern Italy. Housed in the Palazzo dell'Arengario near Piazza del Duomo in the centre of the city, it opened on 6 December 2010 and displays about 400 works, most of them Italian, drawn from the approximately 4,000 pieces in the civic art collections of Milan. The museum is owned by the Municipality of Milan and has quickly established itself as a significant reference point for modern Italian art, with The New York Times hailing its opening as marking a new standard for the field in the city.

The origins of Milan's modern art collections date to 1903, when the Galleria d'Arte Moderna was established in the Sala della Balla of the Castello Sforzesco to hold contemporary art donated by Milanese patrons. In 1921 these collections moved to the Villa Reale in via Palestro. In the early 1970s, critics including Zeno Birolli, Vittorio Gregotti and Germano Celant advanced plans for a dedicated contemporary art museum, leading to the inauguration of the Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea (CIMAC) in 1984 on the top floor of the Palazzo Reale. CIMAC closed in 1998, with its collections placed in storage pending a suitable new venue. In 2001 an international architectural competition was launched to transform the Palazzo dell'Arengario into a twentieth-century art museum. The project by Italo Rota and Fabio Fornasari was selected, and after three years of works costing approximately 28 million euros, the Museo del Novecento opened on 6 December 2010. A major development came in October 2022, when the museum received a five-year loan of twenty-six works from the Gianni Mattioli collection, regarded as the world's most important private collection of Futurist and metaphysical art, valued at 143 million euros.

The museum's permanent collection presents approximately 400 works selected from the 4,000 pieces held by the civic collections of Milan. The display is organised chronologically across multiple levels, tracing the evolution of Italian art through the twentieth century. The collection is predominantly Italian, with only a single room devoted to foreign artists. Thematic sections cover major movements including Futurism, the Novecento Italiano, metaphysical painting, abstraction, Spatialism, kinetic and programmed art, Italian Pop Art, analytical painting and Arte Povera. In 2015 the museum received a substantial donation from private collectors Bianca and Mario Bertolini of contemporary works by artists including Daniel Buren, Joseph Kosuth, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol.

The museum holds one of the most important collections of Futurist art in the world. This section features works by Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, Mario Sironi and Ardengo Soffici. Key works include Boccioni's La Città che sale (1910-1911) and several versions of Balla's Mercurio passante davanti al Sole. The 1992 acquisition of the Jucker collection by the city added significant works including Boccioni's Il bevitore and Carica dei lancieri, Balla's Automobile + velocità + luce, Carrà's Notturno a piazza Beccaria and Severini's Dinamismo di una danzatrice. Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo's large canvas Il Quarto Stato (1902) was formerly exhibited in a dedicated room until 2022, when it returned to the GAM in Milan. Individual rooms are devoted to Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, Fausto Melotti and Lucio Fontana, whose works include the ceiling from the Hotel del Golfo on Elba (1956), spatial concepts from the 1950s and his iconic neon structure. The foreign artists' room contains works by Braque, Kandinsky, Klee, Léger, Matisse, Mondrian, Picasso and Modigliani.

The museum occupies the Palazzo dell'Arengario, a rationalist-style building designed between 1936 and 1956 by architects Enrico Agostino Griffini, Pier Giulio Magistretti, Giovanni Muzio and Piero Portaluppi. The structure consists of two symmetrical cubic towers framing a vaulted passage opening onto Piazza del Duomo, with a facade adorned by bas-reliefs by sculptor Arturo Martini. For the museum conversion, architects Italo Rota, Emanuele Auxilia, Fabio Fornasari and Paolo Montanari carried out renovations that preserved the exterior while radically altering the interior. The most striking architectural feature is a monumental helical ramp, sometimes compared to that of the Guggenheim in New York, which allows visitors to enter directly from the Duomo metro station and ascend through the building. A large window at the top offers a panoramic view of the cathedral and piazza, housing Fontana's permanent neon installation. The museum is also connected by an open passage to two rooms on the second floor of the adjacent Palazzo Reale, extending the exhibition route to include kinetic art, programmed art, Italian Pop Art and Arte Povera.

The Museo del Novecento is located in the heart of Milan at the Palazzo dell'Arengario on Piazza del Duomo, directly adjacent to the city's cathedral. It is owned by the Municipality of Milan and serves as a major public institution for the display and study of twentieth-century Italian art. The museum is accessible via the Duomo metro station, with the helical ramp providing direct access from the underground into the exhibition spaces. Facilities include a bookshop, and a restaurant-bar on the top floor overlooking Piazza del Duomo. The basement houses an auditorium and educational laboratory, while the ground floor contains reception, cloakroom, temporary exhibition space and visitor services.