Art historian and curator Ilaria Bonacossa was recently appointed director of a forthcoming museum dedicated to digital art in Milan, the Museo Nazionale dell’Arte Digitale. Bonacossa has been in charge until now of editing the art fair Artissima, a role she has held since 2017.

The MAD (Museum of Digital Art), will be located in the former Albergo Diurno Venezia, an underground structure built in Piazza Oberdan in the Porta Venezia area attributed to architect Piero Portaluppi. The renovation project for the new museum is scheduled for completion in 2026, with funding of around €6 million. “The Museum,” says Dario Franceschini, Minister of Culture, “will be dedicated to the production and presentation of digital content, playing a strategic role in the contemporary cultural scenario, which is increasingly digitalised, connected and globalised, and in which the very notion of work and audience is inevitably evolving”.

“For years, there was a desire on the part of art not to be understood,” Bonacossa told Domus last November. “Now this is no longer the case, and contemporary art is going through a very topical moment. Social media have created remarkable disintermediation, and teenagers are finding themselves in the languages of art, which speak through photos and videos”.

The new structure is conceived in connection with MEET, and another cultural institution recently opened in the former Spazio Oberdan cinema, designed by Turin architect Carlo Ratti and directed by digital culture expert Maria Grazia Mattei.

Opening image: Ilaria Bonacossa. Photo Giorgio Perottino