Milan’s newly muscled MiArt, the city’s annual contemporary and modern art fair, has proven that its relaunch last year was no one-time fluke. In its second season under the artistic direction of Vincenzo de Bellis, the spry, young founder of Peep-Hole Gallery, the art fair has successfully metamorphosised into a proper five-day event that crawls across Milan’s corners.
De Bellis’s big idea - which seems simple but actually isn’t in a fractured country like Italy - was to unite the activity of every art door in the city. This means not only was there a proper fair inside the vaulted halls of the city’s ex-fiera (featuring contemporary art and design galleries plus a selection of emerging artists) but every major gallery and public-art institution in town was coaxed into coordinating its spring openings in one big art bang.
This is not just good for customers and the general public at large - the snap of energy also bodes well for this normally fragmented and disorganised city. MiArt certainly lived up to its 2014 title, The Spring Awakening, reinvigorating Milan ahead of the Salone del Mobile.