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
Alberto Salvadori founded Fondazione ICA Milano in 2019, where he serves as director, and since 2021 he has also been Director of the Archivio Mulas. He graduated in Art History from the University of Pisa, where he also completed a postgraduate Specialization School diploma in Modern and Contemporary European Art History. He studied at University of Sussex (UK) and University of Reading (UK), and in 2001 obtained a Master’s degree in Curatorial Studies from the Accademia di Brera (Milan).
From 2003 to 2009 he was curator of the general catalogue of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Palazzo Pitti (Florence); from 2009 to 2016 he served as Director of the Museo Marino Marini (Florence); from 2016 to 2022 he curated the Modern and Decades sections of MIART; from 2007 to 2020 he was Director of the Osservatorio per le arti contemporanee of the Fondazione CR Firenze; in 2024 and 2025 he curated the Multipli section and from 2026 the Ventesimo+ section for Arte Fiera Bologna.
He has been a board member of numerous institutions, including the Istituzione Musei Civici di Bologna, Polimoda(Florence), Fondazione Ragghianti (Lucca), the Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci (Prato), Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro (Milan), Magazzino Italian Art (Cold Spring, NYC), and the Italian Council (Rome).
He has realized exhibition projects for the Museo Archeologico di Bologna, Museo Madre (Naples), MART Rovereto, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi (Florence), Stanze della Fotografia (Venice), CCA Montreal, Fundação Iberê Camargo (Porto Alegre), the Pinacoteca do Estado, Museu da Casa Brasileira and Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (São Paulo), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), and Magazzino Italian Art (Cold Spring, New York).
He is a member of the scientific committee of Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro (Milan), the Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci (Prato), and Fondazione Leoncillo.
Among his group and solo exhibition projects are: Utopie Radicali oltre l’architettura: Firenze 1966–1976, Beyond Performances: Mario Garcia Torres, Cally Spooner, Opavivarà, Body Sign: VALIE EXPORT – Ketty La Rocca, and exhibitions dedicated to artists including Morandi, Mario Schifano, Marino Marini, Salvatore Fancello, Bruno Munari, Ugo Mulas, Pietro Consagra, Ettore Spalletti, Gordon Matta-Clark, Lynn Chadwick, Hans Josephson, Andrea Zittel, Liam Gillick, Simone Fattal, Charles Atlas, Simone Forti, Miriam Cahn, Tomoo Gokita, Erika Verzutti, Christine Safa, Yuri Ancarani, Leda Catunda, Michael Anastassiades, Formafantasma, Jasper Morrison, and Marina Rheingantz. He writes for Il Giornale dell’Arte.
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
Piero Gandini
Giovanna Maggioni
Alberto Salvadori
Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi
Giovanna Silva
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
Federica Torgano
Intern
Barbara Niniano
Administration
BBS-Lombard stp srl
Press Office and Communication
PCM Studio (partner Fondazione ICA Milano)
Design
Dallas
Architect
Luciano Giorgi LGB Architetti
Main Sponsor
Banca Intesa Sanpaolo
Main Partner
Eni
Sponsor
Valsoia
Enel
Donors
Santarosa
Finsalute
Gruppo IPAS
Profilati SPA
Partner in kind
Galleria Luisa delle Piane
Fondazione 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.
