Summer at the museum
ADI Design Museum - Piazza Compasso d’Oro, 121.09.2026
From June to September, symphonic concerts, cinema, board games, performances and workshops fill the museum’s spaces in Piazza Compasso d’Oro. All free, all open
There is a museum that never closes its mind in summer, and with it, a new piece is added to the rich mosaic of Milan’s cultural summer, further broadening an offering that the city knows how to build with continuity for its residents and visitors. It is ADI Design Museum, bringing its distinctive approach to the table: a multidisciplinary, neighbourhood-rooted programme with free admission for all. An open cultural platform for the city, with a dense calendar that runs throughout the entire summer season.
The title says it all: Il pensiero non va in vacanza — the mind doesn’t take a holiday. And the message is equally clear: entry is free, always.
The programme opens on 21st June with International Yoga Day and continues every week through July, pausing in August for construction works, before returning in full force in September. The decision to make every event free of charge is a deliberate one: it reflects the museum’s commitment to staying connected with its community during a period of transition, and to offering Milanese residents and summer visitors genuine opportunities for encounter and reflection.
The programme is built on a network logic: the organisations involved all share an active presence in the urban area between Sarpi, Garibaldi and Brera, collectively weaving a cultural fabric that extends well beyond the museum’s walls.
The programme in five strands
Music. Every Saturday in July, the Fondazione I Pomeriggi Musicali brings symphonic concerts to the museum, with programmes ranging from Cherubini to Mozart, Haydn to Schubert and Mendelssohn, conducted by young directors including Andreas Gies, Alessandro Mazzocchetti and Roberta Peroni. Orchestral music in the setting of a design museum: a pairing that works precisely because it is unexpected.
Cinema. The Arte e Potere (Art and Power) cycle, produced in collaboration with 3D Produzioni, offers every Sunday in July a selection of high-profile documentaries exploring the relationship between art, institutions and power — from the portrait of Nan Goldin and her battle against the Sackler family (All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Golden Lion at Venice 2022), to the Hermitage Museum narrated by Toni Servillo, to the Prado seen from the inside with Jeremy Irons as narrator, through to two films on the Nazi persecution of modern art. Every screening is followed by a talk with curators, museum directors and scholars.
Play. The project L’archivio ritrovato. Un museo pop up dei giochi da tavolo (The Rediscovered Archive. A Pop-Up Museum of Board Games), curated by Spartaco Albertarelli and Stefano Mirti, transforms the museum into a space of collective memory and popular culture. Each Saturday in July brings a different theme — from football to television, from major licences to prototypes — as a way of retracing the history of design through Subbuteo, the Star Wars game and the prototypes of Alex Randolph. The cycle returns in September with an evening dedicated to Risk and war games.
Performance. In September, the DANAE Festival, now in its 28th edition and curated by Teatro delle Moire, brings three site-specific performances to the museum: Good vibes only by Francesca Santamaria, which transforms the act of scrolling into choreography; AeReA by Panzetti/Ticconi, in which flags become pure plastic and symbolic form; and Falena by Elisa Sbaragli, featuring dancer Alice Raffaelli. Three evenings at 3 euros — the only exception to the programme’s otherwise universal free admission.
Workshops and exhibitions. September also sees the debut of La Scuola Inutile (The Useless School), conceived by Mario Trimarchi and Stefano Mirti: four days of workshops — conversations with philosophers, freehand drawing, photography as empathy, the Italian language and the narration of reality — conceived as an act of poetic resistance to fast thinking. Running alongside, the first major monographic exhibition dedicated to Carlo Forcolini, curated by Luciano Galimberti, and the installations of Fariba Ferdosi with Dolly Carousel, an ironic meditation on identity, conformism and cloning.
Spazio Gio Ponti: a museum within the museum
Among this season’s new developments is an event that looks ahead to the museum’s future. On 1st July, ADI Design Museum hosts an open seminar dedicated to the new Spazio Gio Ponti: an afternoon of discussion with professionals, scholars, critics and experts — and with the wider public — to outline the scientific direction of the new space dedicated to the Milanese architect and designer. Architectural historian and critic Fulvio Irace, who will oversee the scientific curation of the space, will lead the conversation on the life and legacy of one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century Italian design culture.
All events take place at ADI Design Museum – Compasso d’Oro, Piazza Compasso d’Oro 1, Milan (entrance from via Ceresio 7, via Bramante 42, piazzale Cimitero Monumentale). The full calendar is available at adidesignmuseum.org/eventi/estate-al-museo.
Summer at the museum
21 Sep 2026
