An Inside Look at Salone del Mobile 2025

April transforms Milan into a global cultural hub where design, art, fashion, and architecture converge in a rare synthesis that is open to the public. The month begins with Milan Art Week (April 1 through 6) and Miart (April 4 through 6), Milan’s international modern and contemporary art fair, whose thematic title "Among Friends" pays homage to MoMA's 2017 Robert Rauschenberg retrospective,  embracing his principles of worldly openness and multidisciplinary dialogue. Five cultural powerhouses—Fondazione Prada and Triennale Milano among them—have crafted a citywide celebration exploring the art of collaboration, with each institution weaving the theme through its distinctive curatorial lens and current exhibitions.

The 63rd Salone del Mobile, running April 8 through 13 at Fiera Milano, an exhibition center designed by famed Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas, centers on the theme “Thought for Humans.” The exhibition explores design's fundamental connection to human needs, values, and experiences, highlighting the eternal relationship between body, matter, and space. The exhibition's President, Maria Porro, emphasizes Milan's role as the undisputed world design capital: “In an ever-changing world, we are all called upon to become part of a broader vision that enables us to interpret the environmental, cultural, social, and technological transformations.” 

The crowning achievement of this year's program is Mother, an immersive installation by Robert Wilson at Sforza Castle's Pietà Rondanini Museum. This multimedia experience centers on Michelangelo's unfinished Pietà Rondanini, which the English artist Henry Moore once called "the most moving sculpture ever created by an artist." Wilson's intervention combines dramatic lighting with Arvo Pärt's Stabat Mater, a medieval prayer in the vocal and instrumental versions, which will be performed live through April 13, with the exhibition continuing until May 18. This marks Wilson's welcome return to Milan Design Week, following his previous contributions, including Rooms and Secrets (2000) and Imagining Prometheus (2003).

Wilson's influence extends to the biennial Euroluce lighting exhibition, where he'll headline the first International Lighting Forum on April 10 and 11. The two-day conference features like Studio Drift, A.J. Weissbard, Marjan van Aubel, and Kaoru Mende, and explores light's interactions with architecture and humanity through workshops, roundtables, and demonstrations.

Italian furniture maker Molteni&C celebrates its 90th anniversary by opening a new showroom in a historic Liberty-style palace on Via Manzoni. Creative Director Vincent Van Duysen has transformed the seven-floor space into what is being referred to as an “urban pavilion,” designed to feel like the home of an art and design collector. The building, once home to philanthropist Prospero Moisè Loria, features exclusive works by Dutch Neo-Geo artist Peter Schuyff. The top two floors, dubbed Molteni Galleria, will host public events, conferences, and cultural programming.

The ninth edition of Alcova, the contemporary design platform, builds on its successful Alcova Miami venture by expanding to four remarkable venues in Varedo, just 30 minutes outside Milan. Curators Valentina Ciuffi and Joseph Grima have secured two historic villas—the modernist Villa Borsani and 19th-century Villa Bagatti Valsecchi—alongside the World War I–era SNIA factory, an exemplar of rationalist architecture, and the Serre Pasino, formerly Europe's largest white orchid nursery, in which over 100 global exhibitors will show their works.

The celebrated Homo Faber, an educational and cultural platform, relocates temporarily from Venice's San Giorgio Maggiore to Milan's Casa degli Artisti, partnering with House of Switzerland Milano. Their exhibition Today's Masters Meet Tomorrow's Talents showcases works from their fellowship program, where 23 master-apprentice pairs collaborated over six months, highlighting the vital transmission of traditional craftsmanship to new generations.

Naturally, the Italians should celebrate one of their own during Milan Design Week. At Fabbrica del Vapore, Sineddoche marks designer and architect Nanda Vigo's legacy through furniture and previously unseen archival materials donated to CASVA, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts. Curators Giampiero Bosoni, Mariella Brenna, Maria Fratelli, and Francesca Picchi have created an innovative installation that includes an intimate recreation of Vigo's studio, celebrating the artist’s six-decade career, from her rise in prominence in the 1960s to her passing in 2020.

The art scene during Design Week remains vibrant with several major exhibitions. At Palazzo Reale's Hall of Caryatids, Nico Vascellari's Pastorale (April 2 through June 2) explores humanity's relationship with nature. The Venetian artist, whose work encompasses performance art with sound explorations, returns to Milan to explore the connection between humans and nature through an anthropological lens. The installation also draws inspiration from the hall's destruction during the 1943 bombing of Milan and its subsequent hosting of Picasso's Guernica in 1953. The project extends beyond the palace, with performances and sound pieces happening throughout the city.

Also at Palazzo Reale, curators Tere Arcq and Carlos Martín present one of the most comprehensive retrospectives of Leonor Fini, exploring the Italian-Argentine artist's surrealist investigations of gender and identity. At PAC, Body of Evidence marks Iranian artist Shirin Neshat's first Italian solo exhibition, examining gender constructs in her culture through powerful film and photographic works that position the female gaze as both communication tool and act of defiance.

The Japanese artist Yukinori Yanagi's first major European retrospective, curated by Vicente Todolí with Fiammetta Griccioli, is at the Pirelli HangarBicocca. The exhibition features iconic works, including The World Flag Ant Farm Project, which gained international recognition at the 1993 Venice Biennale, alongside large-scale installations exploring themes of sovereignty and globalization.

Beyond the official Salone del Mobile venues, Milan itself becomes an open-air gallery during this storied week. The city pulses with impromptu exhibitions as galleries, boutiques, and even private spaces throw open their doors, each adding their own creative voice to the cultural conversation. This democratization of design coincides with luxury fashion houses, like Hermès and Bottega Veneta, making moves into the furniture and homeware spaces, staging everything from cerebral design symposia to curated showrooms. Milan once again proves why it remains the world's design capital—not through proclamation, but through an innate ability to blur the boundaries between luxury and accessibility, heritage and innovation, commerce and culture. In this city, for one magnificent week each April, design isn't just displayed—it's lived.