Francesca Guerisoli
Art historian
An art historian, she has been active for twenty years in the fields of curation, artistic production, museum management, and teaching. Her research areas include the relationship between art and society, contemporary museology, and emerging artistic practices.
She is a professor at the University of Milan-Bicocca, where she teaches contemporary museology, the languages of photography, art in urban space, and artistic practices connected to the territory, community, and cultural tourism.
Among her major public roles, she was artistic director of the MAC Museo d'Arte Contemporanea in Lissone, a role she currently holds at the MuDi Museo Diffuso in Lentate sul Seveso. She also participated in the curatorial program of the Fondazione La Quadriennale in Rome.
For fifteen years, she has curated the artistic programming of the Pietro e Alberto Rossini Foundation, focusing on new productions. As an independent curator, she has curated numerous exhibitions, both historical and site-specific projects by contemporary artists. Among her most recent works is her curation, with Nicolas Martino, of the Italian Pavilion at the 2024 Malta Biennale.
She has been a member of the editorial board and a contributor to the quarterly Quaderni d’arte italiana, published by Treccani, and collaborates with Il Sole 24 Ore.
Her publications include: The Attractive City. Urban Places and Contemporary Art (with urban sociologist Matteo Colleoni, Egea, 2014), Ni una mas. Art and Activism Against Femicide (Postmedia Books, 2016), “Contemporary Art and Urban Attractiveness: the Role of Hypermuseums and Art Foundations” (in Making Prestigious Places. How Luxury Influences the Transformation of Cities, Routledge, 2017), “Art Places in Urban Space” (in ESL – Enciclopedia Sociologica dei Luoghi, Vol. 3, Ledizioni, 2020), and the preface to the Italian edition of Miwon Kwon's book, One Place After Anoter. Site-specific Art and Locational Identity (The MIT Press, 2002 – Postmedia Books, 2020).
She is the author of numerous critical essays in monographic catalogs, including: Teresa Margolles Ya Basta Hijos de Puta (PAC, 2018), Cesare Viel. Più nessuno da nessuna parte (PAC, 2019), Gian Maria Tosatti. My Heart Is Empty Like a Mirror (Treccani, 2022), Daniela Comani. Disturbance (FLR, 2024), Italian Pavilion at the Malta Art Biennale. Eugenio Tibaldi. Informal Inclusion (CURA.Books, 2024), Gaia De Megni. Leitmotiv (Allemandi, 2025), Luca Vitone. For Eternity. Introduction to a Trilogy (Allemandi, 2025). For the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lissone he curated the publications Francesco Lauretta. Festival (Postmedia Books, 2022), Lissone Design Award 2022 (with Anty Pansera, Postmedia Books, 2022), Giuseppe Stampone. Personale Connettivo (Postmedia Books, 2023), Premio Lissone 2023 (with Lucrezia Longobardi, Gabi Scardi, Noah Stolz, Saverio Verini; Silvia Editrice, 2023), Replay. Contemporary Art and Radical Museology (with texts by Lorenzo Balbi, Luigi Cavadini, Francesca Comisso, Teresa Macrì, Caterina Riva, Riccardo Venturi; Silvia Editrice, 2023).
