Visit to the Pirelli HangarBicocca

Today I went to visit another museum in Milan (well on the border of Milan really, but it’s still accessible to the red metro line). It’s called the Pirelli HangarBicocca. Some of my friends went there and from the pictures that I saw it looked like it was another kind of museum, different from the usual ones. This made me want to go there and after some researches on it, I found out that the entrance was always free! So just 2 days after I found this out I went to visit it.

The trip by metro takes a little of time since the stop is the last one before the urban limit. Once you get there, you also have to walk 10 minutes more to get to the entrance of the museum.

Pirelli HangarBicocca is a non-profit organization more than a museum. It appeared in Milan in 2004 when they decided to change an industrial installation into a place to produce and promote modern art, from artists that are either national or international. When you see the warehouse (Hangar translates into warehouse and that’s in what the exhibitions are), you realize how big it is. It’s actually one of the longest exhibition space in Europe, with 15 000 square meters dedicated to the exhibitions. That’s why when you have to walk all the way to the other side to get to the entrance when you come from the metro station it seems quite far.

You first arrive in the main building, which gives access to the permanent collection. Since the access to all the exhibitions is free, there is no line to do before getting inside and I think this was really great. It’s also in this building that you can find the coffee shop and other rooms for kids or a “reading room”. The access to the permanent collection is in the back.

When you enter the warehouse, you find many art pieces. All the artworks are of different kinds so I think everybody can find a piece that they like more than the others.

The following picture shows a piece that I really liked, called the “Curious head”.

But my favorite piece of all was the following, which was texts representing “interviews” with captive animals. Our society was clearly criticized from the point of view of animals and I found this very touching.

We then went to the second exhibition; This one was taking place in an even bigger warehouse, which made it even more impressive. It showed really high towers made of different materials that reminded me of neighborhoods in really poor parts of the world. In the same warehouse we could also see huge paintings on the side of the walls. I really liked the last one, even though they were all impressive because of their size.

There should a third exhibition, that used to be made of neon lights, but unfortunately, I think they were installing a new one today, so we couldn’t see it. I will probably go back there later in the semester to see what they did with it!

To sum up, I liked this place, even if the visit is really quick: it took us less than one hour to see both exhibitions, so we probably spent as much time there than we did in the metro to get there.

Visits are open to everybody from Thursday to Sunday every week, from 10am to 10pm. The entrance is always free.

Photo gallery