PRADA FOUNDATION MILAN

The venue reminds a metaphysical painting by Giorgio de Chirico, blending old industrial buildings – there was a gin distillery here – and newly constructed ones, such as the bold white Tower, 60 meters high, which plays a weird contrast with the bright walls of the real gold-plated Haunted House, that was part of the previous distillery. Your guide will explain why the Dutch Archi star Rem Koolhaas, chose gold for this specific building, immediately polarizing the attention of the first-time visitor, who’s encouraged to design his own personal itinerary.

The experience of climbing the nine uneven floors of the majestic Tower will make you feel a bit like ‘Alice in Wonderland”, as every level is a new discovery: the height of the ceilings, the impact with the art exhibitions, the views on the city from the huge panoramic windows.

The Tower, inaugurated in 2018, three years after the official opening of the Prada venue here at Largo Isarco, south suburbs of Milan, is mostly devoted to the Prada Family art collection.

The attractive ‘Haunted House‘ was part of the original distillery. It showcases Robert Gober’s installation plus two works by Louise Bourgeois, both in the permanent collection. You’ll learn about these two artists, dialoguing here in a poetic world dense of personal reminiscences.

Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli gave life to the Foundation in 1993, since then supporting multi-disciplinary collaboration between the arts, architecture, and culture through exhibitions, publications and events. In 2011 they inaugurated their own venue in Venice, on the Grand Canal, at Palazzo Corner della Regina, which is continuing its activities today.

In 2015, with the collaboration of art critic Germano Celant, they were able to open this new great space in Milan where besides exhibiting their own private collection, starring international artists such as Jeff Koons, Walter De Maria, Pino Pascali, Damien Hirst, Carsten Höller and more, they have room for other artists’ exhibitions, concerts, cinema, ballet.

This is how they present their intentions and philosophy: “Art and culture help us with our everyday lives, and understand how we, and the world, are changing. Intellectual research is not only useful and necessary, but it can also become attractive and engaging. These assumptions are key for Fondazione Prada’s activities which, through the evolution of projects, have analyzed intentions and relevance of today’s cultural engagement.”

During our tour we’ll explore the whole area, a sort of great piazza, enjoying the architectures, talking about the building materials, trying to decipher the subtle game of interactions between past and present, color and shapes, and we’ll then concentrate on the magnificent Tower, where we’ll be sucked up into the vortex of “Atlas”, the expositive project that encourages a direct confrontation and an immediate experience with the visual arts.

From Jeff Koons’ shining giant Tulips, to the upside-down rotating Mushrooms of Carsten Holler, the Foundation really fulfils its task of transforming art into an engaging experience.
As a finale: a stop at the “Bar Luce”, designed by movie director Wes Anderson, to revisit the atmosphere of the Fifties, with pastel colors, old jukeboxes, and retro waiters with papillons!