The Museo del Novecento in Milan has announced ‘Il primo Picasso di Milano’, an exhibition focus and research project examining the political and social importance of the first work by Pablo Picasso to enter the collections of the Municipality of Milan.
The museum’s announcement provides no opening or closing dates for the project and does not identify the work by title, date, medium or subject. It presents the initiative as both a display and an investigation, with the central question being the significance of Picasso’s arrival in the city’s public collection. Further details are to be made available through the museum.
The project is listed among the Museo del Novecento’s exhibitions in progress. Located at Piazza Duomo 8, the institution describes itself as a museum of 20th- and 21st-century art, with more than 300 works on display. Its collection and visitor routes cover the historical avant-gardes, art between the two world wars, abstraction, Informel and developments through the early 1990s.
The Picasso focus sits within a wider programme of collection-based presentations at the museum. A separate project explores the permanent collection through a series of detailed studies devoted to figures from Italian art of the second half of the 20th century. Current presentations include a room dedicated to Paolo Scirpa, whose work is associated with object-based and kinetic tendencies linked to Constructivist and Neoplasticist values, as well as later applications of technology.
Other collection displays centre on Alberto Garutti and Bruno Munari. The Garutti room follows five decades of research, from photographic works of the 1950s to more recent projects addressing public space. The Munari focus considers the artist’s engagement with kinetic and programmed art and his renewal of those languages in unexpected directions. These displays form the institutional setting in which the Picasso project is being presented, but the museum’s announcement treats ‘Il primo Picasso di Milano’ as a distinct focus and research initiative.
The museum’s September newsletter also lists public talks, guided visits and family activities, but those programmes are separate from the Picasso project. The museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 7:30pm, and Thursday from 10am to 10:30pm; it is closed on Mondays, with last admission one hour before closing. No event date or dedicated public programme has been announced for ‘Il primo Picasso di Milano’.
