Thaddaeus Ropac gallery opens in Milan The Palazzo Belgioioso will offer a space in the heart of the ‘Museum Mile’
By Valérie Duponchelle
While Italy's museums are gradually closing their doors to foreign directors under the impact of Giorgia Meloni's nationalist policies, the gallery run by Thaddaeus Ropac, the Austrian from Paris, is taking the opposite gamble and betting on Italy. In 2021, this hard worker [...] opened a sixth space in Korea, in Seoul, as part of the wave that is taking South Korea to the heart of the international art market.
This time, he is concentrating on Europe, announcing this morning that he will open a seventh space in Milan in autumn 2025, in the Palazzo Belgioioso, close to La Scala [...] and Via Monte Napoleone. A prestigious 280 m2 space on the top floor overlooking the Piazza Belgioioso, where the sculptures of his artists should find their place. This art globetrotter has just returned from Saint-Moritz, Switzerland's jet-set mecca, where he successfully opened a pop-up space for the happy few with an exhibition devoted to the sculptor Hans Josephsohn. Why Italy? ‘I've always wanted to have the quintessential European gallery. I am first and foremost a European,’ he replies with his customary enthusiasm. ‘We are based in London and Paris, and in the German-speaking world with Salzburg. After our move to Seoul, we were thinking about a new location. We missed Italy. Italy is the country at the heart of the twentieth-century avant-garde. Before and after the Second World War’.
Its director will be Elena Bonanno di Linguaglossa, who has lived between Italy, Austria and the United Kingdom, and already has 25 years' experience in the art market, notably at the New York gallery Lévy Gorgy Dayan. She was also a visiting professor at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome. Her team will be Italian, if not Milanese. ‘As in Seoul, we will take the time to integrate the gallery into the existing cultural infrastructure. There are only two sine qua non conditions: a great venue and a great person. Everything else is built around that, little by little.’ The gallery is due to open in September 2025 at the latest, following restoration and refurbishment work on the historic building.
