Fondazione ICA Milano is an institute for all the arts, an organism for contemporary culture and an ecological project for art based on the principle of sustainability and on relations between people, their contexts and the art world.
ICA Milano is a non-profit institution created by the will, the desire and the passion of five people who identified the city of Milan as the ideal place to start a project oriented towards and focused on contemporary arts. As a 100% private foundation, its nature and juridical structure provides a totally public function where participation and sharing become crucial voices for the project's success.
Since its inception, several professionals belonging to different sectors have given their contribution, leading ICA to germinate and to come to fruition.
The exhibition programme spans from the 20th century up to now, also focusing on the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary languages, where categories fade to leave space for an inter-textuality of thoughts and actions able to involve every kind of public.
Art publishing, ceramics, cinema, performance, music, seminar activities, formation and therapeutics represent some of the dominant elements of the ecosystem that ICA Milano will establish.
Its projects follow a participatory model where the public, the patrons and friends of the institution will work together with the director and curators, sharing the process of construction and organization of its different aspects through direct involvement
Why in Milan and why this name
Milan is the context wherein the richness of the urban milieu and both public and private initiatives have led to the development of different ways of thinking and to several approaches to the culture of sharing on the artistic and social level.
The metropolitan panorama already provides the existence of a multitude of initiatives that, in various ways and to different extents, occupies a planning space of generosity and cooperation between the citizens and their context.
The balance between the public and the private, the on and off relationship conceived between big institutions and smaller organisms, between the best commercial system and public satellite activities has provided Milan strength in planning and importance of thinking ability, unique in Italy. ICA specifically fits within the interstice that has originated among these different models: it is a an institution supported privately - by artists, collectors, art professionals and, above all, by art lovers – whose mission entails a totally public activity aimed toward research and experimentation.
The name includes the new Milanese institution within the constellation of the Institutes of contemporary art that have their cultural matrix in Anglo-Saxon culture where they originated in the mid-1940's: the first one was in fact founded in London in 1946 and still represents the main model for the following ones.
Explaining the institution's mission and features, in 1968 ICA London director Michael Kustow stated that If the new ICA becomes merely another cultural amenity, in a city well stacked with galleries, theatres and concert-halls, it will have failed. It must become an active presence, a focal point where a nucleus of artists from all the contemporary arts can communicate urgent and needed messages. […] A free space, in which the deepest questions that concern us as individuals and society can be explored in continuity […] a sustained enquiry into the roots of our present possibilities and discontents. After fifty years, his words still well identify what ICA Milano has to be.
Alberto Salvadori
In 2019 Alberto Salvadori co-founded Fondazione ICA Milano, of which he is the director. Since 2021 he has been the Director of Archivio Mulas and since 2023 he has curated the section "Multiples" at Arte Fiera Bologna. He graduated in History of Art at the University of Pisa and also graduated from the Postgraduate School in History of Modern and Contemporary European Art in Pisa. He studied at Sussex University (UK), Reading University (UK) and in 2001 he obtained a second level Master's degree in Curatorial Studies at the Brera Academy (Milan). From 2003 to 2009 he was curator of the General Catalogue of the Gallery of Modern Art of Palazzo Pitti (Florence); from 2009 to 2016 he was Director of Museo Marino Marini (Florence); from 2016 to 2022 he curated the Modern and Decades section of MIART; from 2007 to 2020 he was Director of the Observatory for Contemporary Arts of Fondazione CR di Firenze. He has realised exhibition projects for Mart Rovereto, Fondazione Strozzi Firenze, Stanze della Fotografia Venezia, CCA Montreal, Fondazione Ibereè Camargo Porto Alegre, Pinacoteca di Stato, Museo du Casa Brasilera and CCBB in São Paulo, CCBB Rio de Janeiro, Magazzino Italian Art Cold spring, New York. He is part of the scientific committee of the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan and the Centro per l'Arte Contempornea Luigi Pecci, Prato. He has served as part of the board for numerous institutions, including the Istituzione Musei Civici di Bologna, Polimoda (Florence), Fondazione Ragghianti (Lucca), Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro (Milan), Magazzino Italian art (Cold Spring, NYC), Italian Council (Roma). He curated exhibitions of artists such as Morandi, Mario Schifano, Marino Marini, Bruno Munari, Ugo Mulas, Ettore Spalletti, Gordon Matta Clarck, Lynn Chadwick, Hans Josephson, Andrea Zittel, Liam Gillick, Simone Fattal, Charles Atlas, Simone Forti, Miriam Cahn, Tomoo Gokita, Erika Verzutti, Christine Safa, Leda Catunda, Michael Anastassiades, Formafantasma.
Clelia Colantonio
She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Illustration at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London in 2013, specialising in printing techniques and artists' books. For four years, starting in 2014, she joined a Rome-based gallery, Frutta, and in 2018 worked as Project Manager and Studio Director of Nico Vascellari. From 2019 to 2020 she was Head of Communication and Assistant Production at Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples and in 2021 she was the Coordinator of SPRINT– Independent Publishers and Artists Books Salon, Milan and Gallery Manager of Tanya Leighton, Berlin. Since 2022 Clelia is in charge of production of exhibitions and events at Fondazione ICA Milano as Project Manager and Head of Production.
Chiara Nuzzi
Chiara Nuzzi graduated in Art History at Cà Foscari University of Venice, where she also gained her Master in Production and Organization of Visual Arts at IUAV University. In 2012 she attended the first edition of the program for young Italian curators CAMPO, held by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin and in 2014-2015 she completed the research program CuratorLab for international curators at Konstfack University of Stockholm, Sweden. She worked for several private and public institutions. She curated solo and collective shows in Italy and abroad such as Afterimage. Images of Conflict at the Galleria Civica of Trento and Rovereto (2015) and the exhibitions and events' program What Happens to People and What Happens to the Land is the Same Thing in Nice, France (2018). Since July 2018 she is part of the curatorial department as Curator and Editorial Manager.
Board
Bruno Bolfo
Giancarlo Bonollo
Piero Gilardi
Giovanna Maggioni
Alberto Salvadori
Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi
President
Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi
Vice president
Bruno Bolfo
Director
Alberto Salvadori
Curator and Editorial Manager
Chiara Nuzzi
Project Manager and Head of Production
Clelia Colantonio
Curatorial and Production Assistance
Gabriella Rebello Kolandra
Intern
Nicolò Castellani Perez
Administration
BBS-Lombard stp srl
Press Office and Communication
PCM Studio di Paola C. Manfredi, Milano
Design
Dallas
Architect
Luciano Giorgi LGB Architetti
Main Sponsor
Banca Intesa Sanpaolo
Sponsor
Valsoia
Donors
Bluenyx
Finsalute
Magazzino Italian Arts
Profilati SPA
Varigrafica
Partner in kind
Facebook - Instagram
Galleria Luisa delle Piane
ICA Milano collaborates with different professional figures from the art world:
the lawyer Ivan Frioni for legal advice and Franco Broccardi for the third sector.
