It’s our Contemporary art day! At the Doumo Piazza, there’s the Museum 900, an interesting looking museum. The weather is pretty nice, almost letting the sun come through.
The Museum 900, or Museum of the Twentieth Century, is much larger than it looks from outside, with a collection of primarily Italian modern artists, arranged chronologically and thematically to illustrate various movements and styles of twentieth century art. De Chirico and Modigliani are well represented. One gallery is empty except for a ceiling mounted neon light sculpture that loses the battle with the fantastic view of the plaza and the cathedral available from the floor to ceiling windows that make up three walls of the room. We pull up a couple of chairs and sit by the windows watching the sky and the crowds in the plaza for a good half hour.
Just past the great Galleria, we find the Gallerie d’Italia in a former bank building. There’s a very nice café in the building, so we take a break for a cappuccino and a small piece of chocolate cake to share. All the clientele look quite well-off, older and intellectual types, except for one sort of shlumpy guy who orders several glasses of water. When Bob pays our bill, we find that our cappuccinos were a mere 1.50 Euros each. However, our tiny piece of cake was 8 Euros (11 dollars). The nerve.
The exhibits here are very nice, with modern works on the first floor and a collection of 19th Century art on the lower level. The building itself is an exhibit in itself, with a great glass atrium lobby, fine cabinets for the teller windows, and gorgeous marble floors.
Later, we get our tram back to our neighborhood, and as we get off the car, Bob says he’s not ready to go home; we should stop for cocktails at the corner bar. OK! The bar is just the right mix of old world and modern, and the bartender is all excited when we tell him we’re from New York, which of course means Manhattan. He serves us our drinks, then comes over with a plate of hors d’oeurves: bruchetta, olives, salami and cheese. What a treat. We sit and relax while people stop in for a quick shot of espresso, an aperol or beer, decompressing after shopping or work. We could get used to this.
1 Video Included
Milan Art
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