“Un museo di esposizioni temporanee”: il Padiglione d’arte contemporanea di Ignazio Gardella nel contesto culturale milanese tra anni Quaranta e Cinquanta

“A museum of temporary exhibitions”: the architect-engineer Ignazio Gardella used this formula to describe the PAC (Contemporary Art Pavilion) in Milan, summarising the prerogatives and destiny of his first museographic project, opened in 1954, which stood out for its originality in the Italian cultural panorama of the immediate post-war period. The ambiguity of the architectural structure, precariously balanced between an uncertain museum identity, permanent by vocation, and a flexible space designed for a variable palimpsest, was coupled with the uncertainty of its content. The interweaving of the project’s documentary history and the specificities of its underlying cultural plan reveal the identity and political strategies of what, at least in its intentions, was to be the first civic museum of contemporary art in Italy.