ABSTRACT
In June 2015, I traveled to Milan to visit the headquarters of the MeLa Project (European Museums in an Age of Migrations) at Politecnico di Milano. Staying a few steps from the main city station, Milano Centrale, I found myself in the heart of my research on public displays related to migration. The plaza in front of the ornate “Mussolini Modern” station was transformed into an informal camp for migrants from North Africa seeking entry to the rest of Europe. Hundreds of men, women, and children occupied grassy spots-especially where trees provided shade-circling mounds of luggage to protect it from theft. Women washed clothes in buckets and stretched them across bushes to dry. One man sought partial cover behind bushes as a friend poured cold water on him from a bucket so he could bathe. Clothes, rags, torn bags, and makeshift suitcases littered the ground. A hundred feet away was a pop-up building housing both a small branch of Sant Ambroeus, one of the most expensive and elegant coffee shops in Milan, and an “officina” tied into Expo 2015, promoting trade and tourism in China as well as Beijing’s bid for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. The juxtaposition of poverty and wealth, migration and globalization, brought together key themes of this book.
