When, in 2000, Italo Rota won the invited competition for a museum of 20th century art that would relocate the public collections on display from 1984 to 1999 from their temporary space at the Royal Palace, Marina Pugliese was not yet responsible for the design of the museum and there was still no talk in Milan about where to locate the center for contemporary art that Daniel Libeskind would imagine eight years later for the CityLife area.
The collection already existed and so, in this museum, architectural design followed the collections and not the other way around. There were some changes made to the original project. At the time, the idea was to end with the 1980s, but the Museum of the 20th Century will end with the '60s, considering 1968, the year that the Venice Biennale was blocked by protesters, as the watershed year that marked a change in languages and ways of conceiving art and the differentiation between fields of research. The city's museum of contemporary art - still on paper – will commence from that date. Today, after ten years work, construction is advanced; the first artworks were hung and the museum will open to the public in three weeks. Marina Pugliese, newly appointed Museum Director, tells us about the museum in the interview that follows while, in the video posted here, Italo Rota sheds light on some basic developments in the project for the transformation of Palace dell'Arengario by Portaluppi.

What will open the museum visit?
The Arengario tower which will have direct access from the subway. Here, Quarto Stato by Pelizza da Volpedo will be displayed; it can be viewed by the public for free. The painting, completed in 1902, was bought by the Milanese population in 1920. Since the public was taxed to purchase the work, it was considered appropriate to leave it on view inside the tower.
The tower will also host museum services such as the restaurant and bookshop as well as two small galleries. The first will contain a video illustrating the 20th century art collections visible in Milan in public places and therefore complementary to the museum visit (from Casa Boschi Di Stefano to the Museo Messina, the Jesi collection in Brera, Villa Necchi , Palazzo Reale, not to mention the paintings and bas-reliefs at the Milan Courthouse). In the second room, in collaboration with the Italian Film Archive, excerpts from films about the history of the 20th century will be shown, beginning with a film shot in Milan by the Lumière brothers.

After Quarto Stato, an entry fee is paid and the real visit unfolds across the three floors of the Arengario. What will we encounter?
Upstairs, the visit starts with a section on the International Avant-garde with the Jucker Collection, a private collection of the highest quality that the City of Milan acquired in the 1990s. This incredible collection features a series of avant-garde works, including a piece akin to Damoiselles d'Avignon by Picasso done in 1907, Femme Nue, as well as a painting by Kandinsky, a Klee, Braque and Mondrian; it represents the international tendency while the rest of the museum is dedicated to Italian art. This distinctive feature of the civic collections will be maintained in the future. At a time of globalization, it's right that some museums reflect the history of a nation or a particular city. Milan was the capital of Italian art until the 1960s and the civic collections - a very Milanese collection - welcomes exceptional nuclei in small personal sections dedicated to such artists as Arturo Martini, Morandi, De Chirico, Boccioni, Lucio Fontana, among others. Immediately after the international section, the Column Gallery will be entirely devoted to Futurism. Other Futurist masterpieces will be exhibited alongside the most important Boccioni collection in the world. From here, one enters the so-called D wing, a triangular building built by Italo Rota resulting from the intersection of the Arengario and the Royal Palace; it houses seven monographic rooms.
After the monographic rooms, the second floor, accessed by a system of escalators, is visited in the opposite direction. This floor is dedicated to the 1920s and '30s, to the monumental art of the '30s and to Antinovecento (against the 20th century, tr) in its dual nature both figurative and abstract. After a beautiful section of sculptures by Fausto Melotti from 1935, the visit continues, by escalator, to the Fontana Gallery.

According to the project reports, the Fontana Gallery is the museum's icon. In what way?
The Fontana Gallery as epicenter for the whole project was called for in the competition brief. Milan's Civic Art Collections not only have a Fontana collection, in particular the incredible Concetti Spaziali from the 1950s, but they also have, in storage at the Ministry for Cultural Heritage, Soffitto from 1956 from the Hotel del Golfo on the island of Elba. The piece was the subject of a very complex restoration project undertaken by Barbara Ferriani and presented in Amsterdam in June 2010 in the "Modern Art: Who Cares?" show. This is perhaps the largest work of contemporary art ever to be restored: we are talking about 15 by 9 meters, almost 150 square meters. And finally, Neon from 1951, the one from the Triennale, which is owned by the Fontana Foundation; Italo Rota placed it in front of the windows so as to be visible from Piazza Duomo both as a light and as a sign.
He posed the problem of how to display works that are very different from one another so that they would not overlap and so that the light from Neon would not interfere with viewing Soffitto. Taking advantage of its height, the room was divided into three spaces: Soffitto, above which is a loft-gallery where Concetti Spaziali will be displayed and in front of the window, Neon. Moving forward, the room after Fontana is devoted to the 1950s, to the Informale in Milan and Rome with two wonderful works by Gastone Novelli and others by Carla Accardi, Perilli and Turcati. The visitor then goes downstairs and across a bridge to the Royal Palace to enter another 1500 square meter area, 500 of which is devoted to the archives. The archives contain the story of the 20th century Civic Art Collections. It is the entire documented history of the artworks: inclusions, exclusions, acquisitions, exhibitions and projects. This enormous archive stored at the Royal Palace has been inventoried and is made accessible to scholars and researchers.

After the archives, the visit proceeds to the closing part of the museum dedicated to the 1960s. Can you describe it?
There is an initial section dedicated to Arte Programmata e Cinetica (Programmed and Kinetic Art), with some environments, including those by Group T and the interactive space Topoestesia – Itinerario Programmato by Gianni Colombo from 1965-'70; they highlight the transition from the architecture of the Arengario to that of the Royal Palace. If, in the Arengario, the works are in chronological order, at the Royal Palace, there are macro-dimensional pieces and environments including a section on Pittura Analitica (Analytical Painting), a movement that was contemporary with Arte Povera. The visit ends with Arte Povera and a series of rooms where works by Merz, Paolini, Zorio, Anselmo and Luciano Fabro, the Milanese master of movement, are displayed. Here, the museum visit ends at which point you have to retrace your steps. The fact that visitors must revisit the museum, helping them to "digest" the art, was present in Rota's design, but it was an issue that was much debated by the Scientific Board, in particular with Vicente Todolì, whose suggestion it was.

How did the Scientific Board work?
We worked on the exhibit design for two years. The Scientific Board is composed of some of the foremost experts on 20th century Italian art. Nino Castagnoli was the director of GAM in Turin; Antonio Negri is professor at the University of Milan and Flavio Fergonzi is professor at the University of Udine; Lucia Matino is our former director and Vicente Todolì, as an external member, is the former director of Tate Modern and connoisseur of Italian art. Their input was complementary; each had his or her own view of things. For example Castagnoli, in addition to being a university professor, is a museologist and museographer, so he has a clearer reading of the relationship of the artworks to space, while Fergonzi is a philologist and Negri occupies an intermediate position between the two, having realized major shows including one for the centenary of Lucio Fontana. Like all complex projects, there were difficult moments but it was a project of extreme growth.

If you were to choose an adjective to characterize the museum itinerary, how would you define it?
I would define it as clearly historical in the sense that we did not make thematic or diachronic choices or create bizarre juxtapositions, like the last exhibit at GAM in Turin, which basically follows the trend initiated by Tate and MoMA in 2000. We did not do any of this, but the layout also has a strong emotional impact. We tried to focus on respect for the historical order of the artworks at the same time choosing the best of the collection, thus placing great importance on visual impact. This was accomplished through the activation of certain expedients, for instance, at the end of each long wing, we always previewed what would be seen later to grant greater understanding of connections and turning points. So at the end of the Futurism gallery, there is a metaphysical still life by Carrà from 1917; at the end of the 1950's gallery is Rosa Nera by Kounellis recalling and anticipating the final part of the museum dedicated to Arte Povera.

In addition to the museum collection what else will be offered to the public?
The two important areas for us are the archives and teaching. Archives are the past and teaching is the future.
On the ground floor, with showcases visible from the street, there will be a space for temporary exhibits and for more in-depth exploration of the material displayed. In the basement, there will be a small conference room and space for education programs organized for different age and skill groups from multimedia learning for very young children to hands-on learning. There will also be a space for the visually impaired with reproductions of sculptures.
We worked with a contemporary artist, Marzia Migliora, to produce, in collaboration with the Lombardia Region, which financed some of the installations for the Twister project, artist audio guides which provide great added value for the museum. Marzia selected about twenty pieces from the collection and asked people who were completely alien and detached from the art world to talk about what they saw when standing in front of them. She interviewed the astronaut Franco Malerba, puzzle designer Piero Bartezzaghi, psychiatrist Claudio Mencacci, a dyslexic child, a custodian who read the work from behind, composer Steve Piccolo and actor Pippo Delbono. She put them in front of artworks that could potentially evoke different readings. The result is truly incredible. This contribution will be a both a work of art and an anomalous narration of the museum visit.