Museo del Novecento

What it is

The Museo del Novecento occupies the Palazzo dell'Arengario at Piazza Duomo 8, the civic building on the south side of the cathedral square, and shows more than three hundred works selected from the four thousand-odd pieces of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Italian art held in Milan's Civiche Raccolte d'Arte. It opened to the public on 6 December 2010. The palazzo was designed by Griffini, Magistretti, Muzio and Portaluppi; the conversion into a museum was carried out by Gruppo Rota, and its defining move is a spiral ramp climbing the tower from metro level to the terrace facing the Duomo. The museum exists because Milan's civic art holdings were split in two: the nineteenth century stayed at Villa Reale, the twentieth century came here, into a building whose architecture the city considered a good match for the collection. The permanent route is chronological but cut across by theme. It opens with the Futurism gallery at the top of the ramp, continues on the fourth and fifth floors through the 1920s to the 1950s, passes through the room given over to Lucio Fontana, and closes with the 1960s to the 1990s. This is a municipal museum run by the Comune di Milano, not a private foundation, and its scale is a couple of hours rather than a day.

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What's inside

The route opens with the Galleria del Futurismo, reached from the spiral ramp: Balla, Boccioni, Carra, Rosai, Russolo, Severini and Soffici, with Milan itself — building sites, new tramlines, electric light — as the recurring subject. Controverse modernita covers the years between the wars, setting the return to volume and history in Sironi, Carra and Martini against de Pisis, de Chirico and Savinio, then Morandi and Marini, who fit no movement. The Sala Fontana is a single unified room holding two installations: the Soffitto spaziale, made in 1956 with the architect Borsani for the dining room of the Hotel del Golfo on Elba and reinstalled here in 2010, and the Struttura al Neon designed for the ninth Milan Triennale, an arabesque of dozens of hand-bent fluorescent tubes. Fontana continues on the mezzanine with work from 1951 to 1962. Segno e Materia takes the 1950s and 1960s: Klee and Kandinsky, the Forma 1 group with Capogrossi, Accardi, Dorazio and Perilli, then Melotti, Pomodoro, Uncini and Scarpitta, and a room of its own for Alberto Burri. Gesti e Processi runs from Piero Manzoni and Ugo Mulas's photographs through Fabro, Kounellis and Paladino to Cattelan's Lullaby, in rooms looking out over the cathedral square. FORUM900 closes the visit, half recent-acquisitions gallery and half a display of seating design from 1927 onwards.

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How long to spend

Allow ninety minutes. The museum publishes no suggested visit length of its own, so that figure is this guide's judgement rather than an operator's number, and it is built from the shape of the building: five gallery sections and a mezzanine, a little over three hundred works on show, and a single vertical route that does not double back on itself. Ninety minutes reads the Futurism gallery properly, gives the Fontana room the ten unhurried minutes it repays, and covers the post-war floors at a walking pace. An hour is enough if the museum is a stop between the Duomo and somewhere else, and it will mean skimming the later galleries. Two and a half hours is the sensible upper end, and it is roughly what a temporary exhibition adds — the standard ticket covers those as well, so they are easy to walk into without having planned for the time. The free audio guide offers an itinerary built around five works, which is the museum's own answer to a short visit. Add fifteen minutes at the front on a weekend or a free-entry day for the ticket queue, and note that entry is refused in the final half hour, so the last useful arrival is a good deal earlier than closing time.

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Season and crowds

The museum is closed every Monday and open Tuesday to Sunday from 10.00 to 19.30, with one long day: Thursday runs to 22.30. That Thursday evening is the best slot in the week. The galleries face Piazza Duomo, the square thins out as the day visitors leave, and the neon in the Fontana room reads quite differently against a dark cathedral than it does at noon. Last entry is one hour before closing — 21.30 on a Thursday, 18.30 on every other open day. Two days each month are free and both are busy: the first Sunday of the month is free for everyone, and the second Tuesday of the month is free for visitors up to twenty-five. Treat those as crowd days rather than as bargains if the point of the visit is looking at pictures without a shoulder in the way. Otherwise a weekday morning shortly after ten is the quietest the building gets. The museum closes on 25 December, 1 January and 1 May. The visit is wholly indoors, so weather governs nothing except whether the third-floor restaurant's outdoor tables are pleasant. Strikes and staff meetings do occasionally shut parts of the building at short notice, and the museum announces those on its own home page rather than anywhere else.

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Tickets

A full ticket is 10 euro and a reduced ticket 5 euro, and both cover the permanent collection and the temporary exhibitions together — there is no separate exhibition charge to budget for. The reduced rate applies to visitors aged sixty-five and over, university and AFAM students, Comune di Milano employees, and anyone between eighteen and twenty-five. Entry is free for visitors up to seventeen and for secondary-school pupils, for people with a disability and one companion, for EU tourist guides and interpreters, for accredited journalists and ICOM members, and for holders of the Abbonamento Musei Lombardia–Valle d'Aosta, the Milano Museo Card, the Tourist Museum Card and the YesMilano City Pass. Groups of at least ten take twenty per cent off. An open-dated ticket, usable within twelve months of purchase, costs 11 euro full and 6 euro reduced. Tickets are sold online and at the desk in the entrance hall, and that desk stops selling one hour before closing. The Milano Museo Card is 15 euro for a year across all of Milan's civic museums and the three-day Tourist Museum Card is 20 euro, either of which pays for itself quickly if the Castello Sforzesco or the Galleria d'Arte Moderna are also on the list. Tickets are not refundable except when the museum closes unexpectedly, and groups of ten to twenty-five must book ahead.

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Getting there

No car. The museum stands at Piazza Duomo 8, on the cathedral square itself, and the only parking it names is three bays reserved for disabled visitors holding a permit, in via Pecorari, Piazza Diaz and Piazza Fontana. Arrive underground instead: the M1 red line and the M3 yellow line both stop at Duomo, 250 metres away, and the spiral ramp that forms the museum's route starts at metro level, so the climb from the platforms is already part of the building. Trams 2, 3, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 19 stop at Duomo, 350 metres out; tram 27 at Piazza Fontana, 290 metres; tram 24 at Missori, 350 metres; tram 1 at via Grossi, 500 metres; bus 61 at Duomo MM, 290 metres. BikeMi docks sit at Duomo, Diaz, Rastrelli Larga and Arcivescovado. There are two entrances, both step-free and both with automatic sliding glass doors: one on via Marconi, and one from the open space in front of Palazzo Reale, reached up a gentle three per cent slope. The entrance hall holds the information desk, the ticket desk and a staffed cloakroom at the same counter height. From the cathedral's own doors it is a two-minute walk across the square.

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What to watch out for

Two timing rules cost visitors the most. Last admission is one hour before closing, and the museum separately refuses entry during the final half hour so that the building empties in order — on an ordinary day that puts the effective cut-off at 18.30, which is also when the physical ticket desk stops selling. Buy online if arriving late. The Monday closure catches people who have built a day around the cathedral square, because the Duomo and Palazzo Reale keep their own schedules. The museum states that visitors may go round Milan's civic museums unaccompanied only from the age of fourteen, so younger children need an adult with them. Groups of ten to twenty-five must book in advance by email or telephone, and a group walking with its own guide is required to use radio headsets rather than a raised voice. Tickets are not refundable unless the museum closes unexpectedly, and unexpected closures do happen: strikes and union meetings have shut parts of the building for stretches of an afternoon, announced on the museum's home page and nowhere more prominent, so it is worth a look on the morning of the visit. The free audio guide plays on a visitor's own phone and the museum recommends bringing personal headphones.

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Photography

The museum publishes no photography rules for ordinary visitors on its own site; the only photography page it has concerns permits for commercial shoots, television and film, handled through the Comune's offices. So the honest instruction is to read the notices at the ticket desk and in the individual rooms rather than to assume, and to expect the usual limits on flash and tripods that a municipal collection applies. What can be said with confidence is where the light is. The best pictures in this building are not of the pictures. The spiral ramp is the museum's architectural signature and photographs well from below, looking up through the turns of the tower. The Fontana room is the other one: the Struttura al Neon, an arabesque of hand-bent fluorescent tubing, hangs in front of windows that give straight onto Piazza Duomo, so the flank of the cathedral sits behind the neon in a single frame. That shot changes completely with the hour, and the Thursday late opening to 22.30 is the only time in the week the museum is open while the square outside is dark. The third-floor restaurant terrace looks over the Duomo too, but it is a restaurant rather than a viewpoint, and the view comes with a table.

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Where it is

Nearby

External links

• View on Wikidata