Allestimenti museali milanesi nelle suggestioni e nelle applicazioni, tra il secondo Ottocento e il secolo successivo

Between the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth, Milan became a fertile ground for experimentation in museum display, where art, science, and craftsmanship converged in shaping a modern idea of the city. Within the research framework of the PRIN 2017 project and the CoMwork platform, a rich constellation of archival photographs and documents offers a direct glimpse into this transformation: museums and exhibitions appear not as static repositories, but as sites where the visual imagination of modernity was built and negotiated. What emerges is a landscape of display practices still suspended between erudition and improvisation, in which the act of arranging objects carried both poetic and practical significance. The rise of the vetrina—the glass case as a stage for knowledge and spectacle—signals a turning point: the museum no longer sought only to preserve, but to communicate. Through international and national expositions, most notably that of 1881, Milan’s exhibition culture embraced a language that merged artistic invention, the seduction of commerce, and civic pride. From these experiences grew a new sensitivity to space, light, and narrative rhythm. The Sala dei Bronzi at the Castello Sforzesco epitomizes this passage from ornamental abundance to deliberate composition, from accumulation to storytelling. In such spaces, the Milanese museum took shape as a living organism—both a mirror of the city’s industrious spirit and a workshop of its modern identity.