PLACES & ARCHITECTURES | Artful façades

The starting point is the tension towards beauty,
Towards art, so that surprise, astonishment
And the unexpected are also part of the architectural work.
—Oscar Niemeyer

By Fulvio Irace

Façades which talk, which create dialogue with each other and the city’s residents,and always-modern spirit of the time. It’s an open-air museum, a project by the MuseoCity ETS Association, which invites us to discover areas and buildings in the city which are unexpected and secret. A loving gesture for Milan and the beauty of the places where, every day, locals spend hours of their lives. and which express whims, tastes and feelings. In Milan, they do so wholeheartedly, engaging the work of artists to contribute to a landscape which confirms the local Zeitgeist, the eternally changing.

‘Architecture is reflected in time’, wrote Alberto Savinio. ‘More than their mere date of birth is written upon the façades of buildings. They’re inscribed with pure sentiments, customs, and the most secret thoughts of their time.’Those of Milan have been expressed singularly through the work of artists—anonymous and famous—who have continuously impressed the marks of their trades on the façades of many buildings: from monumental to private, from the homes of the wealthy to simple blocks of flats.
No other city can boast so many works of art exhibited in public as Milan. In ‘the most city-like city in Italy’ (as Giovanni Verga described it), the art of civic ornamentation was, for more than a century, a way to affix the changeable winds of modernity in stone, concrete and metal. The fashions and idiosyncrasies of the moment, from luxuriant Art Nouveau expressions to the monumental art of Italian Fascism, up to the abstractions of the democratic dream of art for all, have been impressed upon them.
Between the end of the 1800s and the dizzying start of the 1900s, artists and decorators used the façades of new residential buildings as canvases upon which to project the Art Nouveau dream. Panels covered in majolica tiles, painted plaster and figures produced by the ‘decorative concrete’ industry would create the illusion of a green Milan, summed up in floral allegories suspended between windows and balconies or in the stylised representation of feminine figures against the backdrop of lush, flowering pergolas; perhaps to sweeten the powerful reality of that which Boccioni described as ‘the city which rises’.
After the Great War, spring turned into the winter: 20 years of Fascist rule in Italy. However, the city soon got back into gear, starting to ‘rise’ again and extend into the new perspectives of large buildings which, to Savinio, seemed engraved in hard steel. The aesthetic populism of the regime supported the dream of ‘militant’ artists such as Mario Sironi who, in Milan, issued the manifesto of Muralism, an attempt at social painting which claimed to speak directly to the people. The languid style of fin de siècle ladies would give way to a stream of she-wolves and fasces which act as the backdrop to the austere figures of monumental women reminiscent of Ancient Rome matrons and severe workers as they parade across the façades of institutional buildings, akin to a population of marble heroes.
Yet, not even the conclusion of the tragic bombardments could extinguish the zeal of those who, in the 1950s, would start collaborating with architects again, under the banner of a ‘synthesis of the arts’—arts that, in the meantime, had been freed from the weight of the political ‘message’ to soar in a national version of art for all. Artistic interventions are no longer the trademark of public buildings; instead, they appear mainly on the façades or in the interiors of private homes and churches.
The results can be seen when exploring the streets of Milan, which we can credibly call an open-air museum: one where the works of art aren’t hung on the walls of galleries, but suspended or mounted on the façades of homes and other buildings, taking the form of free, permanent ‘exhibitions’ which don’t so much as require a ticket.

Museocity is a non-profit association which has been active in Milan since 2016. It helps promote and raise awareness about the vast museum heritage of Milan and Italy in general. Its goal is to increase the engagement and participation of an ever-broader audience in the city’s artistic-cultural life. The association has an active network which informs, conveys, and encourages people to learn more about the cultural heritage of Milan by continuously offering activities which involve its residents, younger generations and foreign visitors, precious opportunities to talk about the city and its cultural heritage, revealing its lesser-known, surprising aspects.
The goals of the association are: to share the cultural heritage of the city through multifaceted initiatives and high-value connections; to work with different entities, foundations, museums and archives to plan targeted and interconnected actions which will engage an ever-broader and more diverse audience; to open up to other forms of creativity, looking to the future; and to encourage the public to visit cultural sites.
Since 2017, Museocity and the municipality of Milan have organised an event titled Milano Museocity. Held the first week of march, it involves over 100 institutions and is attended by over 80,000 people each year.