"We all thought it was a joke until it became reality."
American visual artist Theaster Gates delivered candid remarks about recent cuts to cultural funding under the new U.S. administration.
Speaking on the opening night of Milan’s Art for Tomorrow conference, Gates expressed shock at the extent to which culture in the United States was being undermined through the dismantling of key organizations and funding systems. The reduction of grants to arts organizations had resulted in job losses among several of his colleagues.
He urged citizens to take an active role in supporting their communities instead of relying solely on top-down efforts, warning that political disengagement would have serious consequences.
Gates was among several renowned visual artists featured at this year's conference. British sculptor Antony Gormley, Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat, and American painter David Salle also presented their work. On the closing night, American artist Jeff Koons appeared on stage at Teatro Lirico, a historic Milanese opera house dating back to 1779.
The main venue for the conference was the Triennale Milano, a vast 1930s building that hosts a major international exhibition every three years, gathering architects, designers, and artists around a unifying theme.
This year’s exhibition, titled "Inequalities" and running through November 9, coincided with the conference, allowing shared exploration of common themes and creative talent. The Art for Tomorrow event, launched in 2015, is organized by the Democracy and Culture Foundation and includes panels moderated by leading journalists.
Gates, who contributed an installation to the Triennale show, focuses much of his work on revitalizing neglected spaces into vibrant cultural centers. Based in Chicago’s South Side, he highlighted the fate of St. Mary of the Assumption Church, where Pope Leo XIV once worshiped as a boy, which now faces potential sale and decay.
He explained that the Archdiocese of Chicago can desacralize churches, removing their spiritual significance and leaving behind only the physical structure.
Architecture was a key topic during a panel on the conference’s opening evening. Norman Foster, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect who curated a section on emergency housing within the "Inequalities" exhibition, highlighted that more than one billion people—around 14 percent of the global population—live in slums without access to adequate shelter, sanitation, clean water, or electricity.
He criticized the common practice of demolishing slums and relocating communities away from their livelihoods. Instead, he emphasized that providing suitable housing is fundamental to architecture. At the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, his firm showcased a scalable prefabricated emergency housing unit.
Other architects are also addressing emergency housing: in 2015, Zaha Hadid Architects designed modular tents that can serve as shelters, schools, and clinics for displaced populations.
Stefano Boeri, architect and president of Triennale Milano who commissioned the "Inequalities" exhibition, spoke out against growing housing inequity in Milan. He reported that rents have risen 22 percent over the past decade, while average incomes have increased only 12 percent, with the city’s poorest neighborhoods hardest hit. He called on Italian policymakers to correct this imbalance.
Tommaso Sacchi, Milan’s deputy mayor for culture, described the city as undergoing a profound transformation. While Milan remains internationally renowned for design and fashion, he stressed the importance of supporting broader cultural and heritage sectors beyond major brands.
Milan's standing as a contemporary art center has been strengthened by private institutions established since 2000, such as Pirelli HangarBicocca and Fondazione Prada. Later this year, international gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac will open his first Italian gallery in Milan, further enhancing the city’s art scene. This expansion is partly fueled by Italy’s new tax incentives attracting wealthy foreign residents.
Despite these positive developments, the global art market is showing signs of stagnation.
During the conference, leading art auctions in New York recorded disappointing outcomes. A bronze bust by Giacometti, estimated at over $70 million, failed to sell at Sotheby’s, while Warhol’s "Big Electric Chair," expected to fetch around $30 million, was withdrawn from a Christie’s sale at the last moment.
Belgian collector Alain Servais described the market as stagnant, with speculative investors retreating due to a lack of transparency and inconsistent pricing between galleries and auction houses, undermining art’s reliability as an investment.
Italian gallerist Massimo De Carlo echoed this sentiment, acknowledging the challenges facing the art world. He noted that for decades, art was promoted as a sound financial investment, but this narrative overlooked the risks inherent in art purchases. He called for a fundamental shift in the art market’s business model.
Beatriz Colomina, Princeton University professor of architecture and co-curator of the "We the Bacteria" section of the exhibition, offered a unique perspective linking architecture and microbiology.
An exhibition panel explained that for over four billion years, microorganisms have shaped the Earth’s crust to support life. Microbes are key architects and inhabitants of the biosphere, including humans.
The highest concentration of microbes is found in the human colon, followed closely by the Earth’s topsoil. However, over the last 10,000 years, humans have increasingly separated themselves from the soil through building practices, profoundly altering both themselves and the microbial world.
In a panel discussion, Colomina emphasized that humans rely on trillions of microbes for survival and mental health, yet maintain a conflicted relationship with bacteria.
She warned that the rapid loss of microbial diversity poses a greater threat to humanity than climate change and could ultimately be fatal. Architecture, she argued, must evolve to reconnect buildings with the soil rather than harm microbial life.
While the conference debated art, architecture, markets, and ecology, conflicts persisted globally, including in Ukraine and Gaza.
In a panel on art and war, international peace negotiator Nomi Bar-Yaacov described a worsening global leadership crisis. She criticized countries claiming democratic leadership while acting autocratically and warned of technology companies enabling anti-democratic sentiment, posing a significant threat to democracy.
Sudanese political cartoonist Khalid Albaih shared concerns, highlighting the shrinking safe spaces for artists and activists. Unlike before, when democratic nations provided refuge for dissidents, today deportations and restrictive policies have made it harder for such individuals to continue their work.
Closing the conference at Teatro Lirico, Jeff Koons expressed optimism. As images of his iconic sculptures played, he reflected on the joy of creative participation and the value of sharing perceptions with others.
Koons described Art for Tomorrow as a celebration of the transformative power of the arts and emphasized the importance of using artistic knowledge to inspire and uplift communities.
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