The Prada Foundation is launching a new photography gallery next month in Milan’s oldest shopping arcade, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II which opened in 1877. The new space, called Osservatorio, extends across the fifth and sixth floors of the Galleria where Mario Prada, the grandfather of the patron and collector Miuccia Prada, opened the fashion brand’s first store in 1913.
“Osservatorio will be a place where trends and expressions in contemporary photography are explored, investigating the constant evolution of this medium,” according to a project statement. The works exhibited will not be part of the Prada Collection, a spokesman says, adding that the future programme will be announced early next year.
The opening show, entitled Give Me Yesterday (21 December-12 March 2017), will include works by 14 Italian and international artists including Ryan McGinley, Joanna Piotrowska and Melanie Bonajo. The artists belong to a generation that turn the “photographic diary into an instrument to focus on their own daily lives and intimate, personal rituals”, the organisers say.
Early last year Miuccia Prada and her husband Patrizio Bertelli opened a 19,000 sq. m contemporary art centre at the former Largo Isarco industrial site, south of Milan. The pair commissioned the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who added three new buildings—a large exhibition pavilion, a nine-storey tower and a cinema—to seven existing industrial spaces.