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Established in 1977 by ICOM – the International Council of Museums – under the patronage of UNESCO, International Museum Day is celebrated every year on May 18. The goals are many: to raise awareness about the role of museums as spaces for intercultural dialogue, education, and global cooperation, and to highlight their central place in contemporary society. Museums are no longer merely repositories of the past; they are laboratories for innovation, participation, and critical reflection on the present.
This evolving role calls for a broader network of interlocutors and cultural and creative industries that move beyond technical and disciplinary boundaries. In this extended scope, museums are increasingly becoming agents of transformation - fluid, dynamic institutions that breathe in new visions, cultivating relationships between communities and economies, and bridging the public and private sectors. This is a vision suited to rapidly changing contexts, where the very idea of heritage and knowledge is no longer singular and unidirectional but multipolar.
In this context, businesses play a key role - true cognitive environments and drivers of innovation that go far beyond economic output or the old model of simple sponsorships.
The theme chosen by ICOM for 2025 is “The Future of Museums in Rapidly Changing Communities.” It’s an invitation to reflect on how museums - and cultural venues at large, increasingly diverse and multifaceted - can evolve to interpret change and guide the transition toward a more inclusive future, fostering new bonds between individuals and communities.
From its origins, i-Mesh has embraced the DNA of a creative enterprise that views cultural processes as essential levers for innovation - even in the business model itself. The company’s ongoing dialogue with contemporary cultural and design networks, the worlds of art and architecture, and academia has always been a driving force - upstream - generating emblematic stories that unfold as multidisciplinary case studies. Collaborations with artists, curators, and institutions have long represented valuable explorations for i-Mesh: new ways of inhabiting cultural spaces, sources of dialogue between craftsmanship and technology, between local tradition and global experimentation.
One emblematic project, Alik in Wonderland (2013), was a theatrical exercise in "mise en scène" where light and shadow intertwined in a continuous dance. This temporary installation - curated by Francesca Molteni and Margherita Palli - was staged in the secret gardens of the Alik Cavaliere Art Center in Milan. It merged the artistic imagination of the Milanese sculptor with the fantastical world of Lewis Carroll. Ticking clocks inspired by Alik’s shapes rolled across shimmering, light-permeable screens, evoking archetypes, conceptual symbols, and the rounded iconography of literary imagination.
Margherita Palli continued this study in Puzzle Me (2016), where the screen and the installation - within the liturgical space of the theatre - reinterpret visual languages, meanings, and the understanding of the image.
This use of the screen as a platform for projects in evolution - between art and architecture - found further expression in the 2013 edition of Demanio Marittimo.KM-278, a significant experiment led by Cristiano Toraldo di Francia. Here, screens and images moved freely among people in a fully open public space, creating an immersive visual experience for everyone.
Of a different nature yet aligned with the broader vision of the contemporary museum, was the institutional experience at the Museo Poldi Pezzoli during Milan Design Week 2014. The exhibition The Soft House. Between Art and Design, curated by Beppe Finessi with contributions from Marco Ferreri, took place in a historic house museum celebrating objects in their symbolic and design dimensions. Originally curated by some of the most acclaimed artist-decorators of their time, the museum’s rooms are precious containers of old paintings, sculptures, furnishings, and applied arts. In this context, Marco Ferreri’s tapestries served as a device for reinterpreting the collection - offering a fresh reading of both the museum and its narrative through a study on design and contemporary textiles.
The interconnected dimension of networks and patterns has also confronted some of the most complex urban contexts. One story explored a poetic and visual model aimed at creating a sense of public identity through signs and symbols: Weaving Architecture, presented at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale by EMBT Miralles Tagliabue for the Clichy-Montfermeil Metro Station in Paris. The project responded to a sensitive social context - an urgent need for urban, multiethnic, and multicultural integration. It emerged from in-depth research into patterns and iconographies drawn from African cultures, blending natural and synthetic threads, textures, and colors. It confronted contemporary architecture’s challenge to redefine the boundaries between material, space, and perception.
Every i-Mesh project is both a hub and a lab - where stories are woven through thread, pattern, and light. The textile dimension, rich with both technical and formal meaning, becomes a narrative surface - a form of augmented memory capable of transforming public and museum spaces alike.
