Massimo De Carlo gallery was founded in Milano in 1987. Since the beginning Massimo De Carlo gallery program included young and prominent artists such as, among others, Alighiero Boetti, Rudolf Stingel, Maurizio Cattelan, and Yan Pei-Ming. The global affirmation of these and the other artists of the gallery has favoured its on-going success. For 30 years Massimo De Carlo has been playing a fundamental role in bringing the most interesting voices of international art to the Italian scene, and Italian artists into the global arena. This contributed to the promotion and establishment of a vital dialogue between the artists and national and international institutions, encouraging relationships between galleries, critics, curators, and collectors. Throughout the years, the gallery’s artists have been shown in international museums and biennials, and thus obtained an outstanding place into important public and private art collections. Since 2019 Galleria Massimo De Carlo's new headquarters are located at Casa Corbellini-Wassermann, situated in Viale Lombardia 17, which was built in the early 1930s (1934-1936) by the renowned Italian architect Piero Portaluppi.

Starting from the end of the Nineties, the Gallery knew how to cut out its own space and become the reference point to lovers of historical design as well as to people following the evolution of contemporary design, above all within that more learned, poetic and visionary area shifting between production and contemporary art. Nina Yashar, the gallery founder, works with her sister Nilu and a team of five people. Nilufar took part in several editions of Pavillon des Arts et du Design in Paris and is always present at Design Miami/Basel. Nilufar has its own small manifesto, composed of three words: Discovering, Crossing, Creating. Discovering Novecento is the century of design, a source of extraordinary stories and objects which will be dealt with again for a long time, waiting just for the right time to come out of the oblivion. According to Nilufar's vision, modern antique dealing is an old definition. It is necessary to shift towards a less vague word, searching for names, projects, schools, manufactures, countries making history and deserving to be proposed again. Crossing The history of taste is a never-ending exercise of decomposition and re-composition, just like a kaleidoscope... This continuous joining together of pieces and traditions houses an open eye, heedless of labels, able to cross fences created by time, geography and cultural matrixes, aware that assonances and contrasts can be two sides of the same coin. This is the idea of Crossings, the name of two successful exhibitions Nilufar held in 1999 and 2000, a true invitation to build new visions of the world, being far more personal and freer. Creating Milan is an interesting lab and a privileged point to observe the euphoric and restless scene of design. Nilufar gives life to projects, editions, site-specific shows and publications, working both with great masters and emerging authors. Nilufar is operating in the scouting of new talents. Creating means bringing about occasions, sparkles. It means also obtaining new spaces and filling them with value for the future. Here in Italy we know how to do it: Renaissance was born here!

Pirelli HangarBicocca is a non-profit foundation, established in 2004, which has converted a former industrial plant in Milan into an institution for producing and promoting contemporary art. This dynamic center for experimentation and discovery covers 15,000 square meters, making it one of the largest contiguous exhibition spaces in Europe. It presents major solo shows every year by Italian and international artists, with each project conceived to work in close relation to the architecture of the complex, and explored in depth through a calendar of parallel events. Admission to the space and the shows is completely free of charge, and facilitators are on hand to help the public connect with the art. Since 2013, Vicente Todolí has been the foundation’s Artistic Director. The complex, which once housed a locomotive factory, includes an area for public services and educational activities, and three exhibition spaces whose original twentieth-century architectural features have been left clearly visible: Shed, Navate, and Cubo. As well as its exhibitions program and cultural events, Pirelli HangarBicocca also permanently houses one of Anselm Kiefer’s most important site-specific works, The Seven Heavenly Palaces 2004-2015, commissioned for the opening of Pirelli HangarBicocca. The history of Pirelli HangarBicocca is closely linked to that of Breda, a company incorporated in 1886 by Ingegner Ernesto Breda, who moved it to the Bicocca district from 1903. Pirelli, Falck and Marelli followed suit with their own companies, thus turning the area into one of the most important industrial centres in Italy. In the new 200,000m² factory, Breda mainly manufactured railway carriages, electric and steam locomotives, boilers, farm machinery and equipment and, during the First World War, aeroplanes, projectiles and other products for the war effort. One of these factory buildings was Pirelli HangarBicocca, which at the time was divided into blocks of different types, origin and size. The “Shed“, for example, a typical low bare-brick factory building with double-pitched roof and large skylights, is already quite recognisable in photos dating from the first half of the 1920s. It was here that components for locomotives and farm machinery were manufactured. In 1955 Breda Elettromeccanica e Locomotive enlarged its premises with the addition of a cubic barrel-vaulted building which is now the Cubo exhibition space of Pirelli HangarBicocca. The huge building that joins the Shed and the Cubo, which is today called “Le Navate”, was constructed between 1963 and 1965 for the transformers department. It was here that high-powered machines were assembled and tested. The building, which has retained its original dimensions – 9500 m² with a height of about 30 metres – consists of a “nave” and two aisles. Since 2004, one of these has been home to The Seven Heavenly Palaces by the German artist Anselm Kiefer. Storage facilities and sheds were demolished in about 2000 to create the garden where Fausto Melotti’s La Sequenza has been since 2010. In the early 1980s, Breda was taken over by the Ansaldo Group and, almost at the same time, the historic industrial areas gradually began to be decommissioned. The Bicocca district then underwent an almost total urban redevelopment. The Bicocca Project, which was launched in 1986, led to the creation of university buildings, administration centres and private housing around the Teatro degli Arcimboldi, as well as to the redevelopment of the old Pirelli factory buildings. After a decade of neglect, Pirelli HangarBicocca (formerly known as Ansaldo 17) was purchased by Prelios, the former Pirelli RE, which in 2004 decided to turn it into an exhibition space for contemporary art.

Fondazione Prada is an institution dedicated to contemporary art/ culture and is located in an former industrial complex on the southern edge of Milan. The new and regenerated buildings are designed by OMA/ Rem Koolhaas. A must visit is Bar Luce designed by Wes Anderson.

The best pizza I have ever tried (highly recommend Diavola Gialla)!