Milan was among the places hit hardest by the pandemic, but now the cosmopolitan Italian city is ready to celebrate the way it knows best—through arts and culture. The city’s lively international art fair Miart, which was held virtually last year, is returning this week (September 13–19) with 145 galleries, including a strong showing of northern Italian galleries. 

Now in its 25th edition, Miart also organizes the beloved Milano Art Week, a citywide series of openings and special events at major public museums as well as private collections and galleries alike. 

This year’s week-long series of events are themed “Starry Worlds,” a prompt inspired by Adrienne Rich’s poem “For Memory” (1981) and its lines “freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine/ remembering. Putting together, inch by inch/ the starry worlds. From all the lost collections.”

Adrian Paci, Untitled (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Kaufmann Repetto.

Taking to heart the mission of “putting together, inch by inch, the starry worlds,” Miart reached out to the city’s numerous institutions asking that artists involved in their September exhibitions might share verses, quotes, or fragments of poetry that have been significant or influential for their work.

The snippets of text will be featured in what the fair is referring to as a digital “anthology-constellation,” with the selected verses oriented on a map of the city. Among the artists participating in the project are Nairy Baghramian at Fondazione Furla, Maurizio Cattelan at Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, and Zehra Dogan and Luisa Lambri at Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea.

In addition to the many exhibitions slated to coincide with the fair, Miart has also organized several events dedicated to public art, from live outdoor painting to installations in city spaces, including the site-specific project Rudere by Adrian Paci for ArtLine Milano at the CityLife park. The fair is also collaborating with the music festival C2C for #C2CMLN, a two-day live music program in partnership with Gucci that includes the open rehearsal of Forse Ora, a new and anticipated musical project by musicians Caterina Barbieri, Lorenzo Senni, and Jim C. Nedd.

Miart and Milano Art Week run through Sunday, September 19. Discover more about the fair here.