Milan Contemporary Art Galleries: From Hangar Bicocca to PAC

Milan's contemporary art scene is one of the most underrated in Europe — a city better known internationally for fashion and design has quietly built an extraordinary infrastructure for contemporary art that spans purpose-built museums, commercial galleries representing major international artists, and the private collections of Italy's industrial families opened to the public. Understanding this scene requires knowing where to look beyond the Pinacoteca di Brera's Old Master collections.

Pirelli HangarBicocca in the northern Bicocca district is Europe's largest permanent installation venue — a former factory whose 15,000 square metres have been home to Anselm Kiefer's 'The Seven Heavenly Palaces' since 2004, seven enormous lead towers that fill the space with existential weight. The exhibitions programme alongside the permanent installation is consistently ambitious. PAC (Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea) in the Porta Venezia area presents international contemporary exhibitions in a building rebuilt after a 1993 Mafia bombing that killed five people.

The commercial gallery scene in Milan has concentrated around Brera and the Porta Venezia area — Massimo De Carlo (with spaces in Hong Kong and London as well), Francesca Minini, and Galleria Lia Rumma represent the international tier. The Fondazione Prada at Largo Isarco is perhaps the city's most architecturally spectacular arts venue: a former distillery converted by OMA/Rem Koolhaas into a campus of galleries, a cinema, a tower, and the extraordinary 'Ca' Corner' — a Venetian palazzo facade reconstructed within the complex.