Digital art, NFTs, and the Metaverse will be the protagonists of a new museum in Milan, one of the first of its kind in the world.
It will be called MAD, Museum of Digital Art (Museo Arte Digitale, in Italian), and will be located in the enchanting Art Nouveau premises of the Albergo Diurno in the Porta Venezia area, a former underground public bath, barber, and travel agency. Owned by the City of Milan, this jewel of the 1920s will be renovated to house the new museum over the next four years.
The project is still on paper, and the inauguration is currently scheduled for 2026 and can count on €6 million of public funding.
Culture Minister Dario Franceschini has taken the first step by appointing the director, Ilaria Bonacossa, an art historian and curator who has just finished her post as director of the contemporary fair Artissima in Turin.
The new museum will be built from scratch, at the moment, there is not even an architectural project. The only indication comes from a note from the Ministry of Culture which affirms that the new museum “will be dedicated to the production and presentation of digital content, playing a strategic role in the contemporary cultural scenario, which is increasingly digitalized, connected, and globalized.”
