Foundation

Founded in 1975, the Bagatti Valsecchi Foundation Onlus is a ‘private law’ entity created by the heirs of Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi as the instrument for preserving the unified whole made up of the art collections and their placement in the historic apartments on the noble, or first, floor of the mansion of the same name. Since 1998, the foundation has become an Onlus, that is, a non-profit organization dedicated to an activity of social utility. Today, the Bagatti Valsecchi Foundation Onlus has as its mission the management of the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, which preserves and makes available to the public – in the very rooms for which they were intended and from which they are perpetually inseparable – the art collections of the brothers, Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi. The foundation acts in the spirit of tutelage, promotion, highlighting and promoting things of historical-artistic interest, according to the Italian law, June 1, 1939, n. 1089.

Pasino Bagatti Valsecchi (Milan, 1901-1976), inheritor of the family's art treasures, made the decision to contribute the Renaissance art collections and everyday items amassed by his uncle, Fausto, and his father, Giuseppe, at the close of the 19th century to the foundation. Concurrently, the residence was sold to the Region of Lombardy with the stipulation that the historical exhibits on the noble, or first, floor of the building would be maintained in their entirety. This condition aimed to preserve the inseparable connection between the 'contained' (the collections) and the 'container' (the spaces they were intended for), a distinctive feature in the collecting history of the Bagatti Valsecchi. The inauguration of the museum to the public on November 22, 1994, marked a pivotal moment in the foundation's journey. In fact, this desire was one of the strongest motivations for the constitution of the foundation. Pasino and his heirs wanted to protect the Bagatti Valsecchi home and its collections from the risk of the dispersion and dismembering that almost every passage to the next generation entails. They were fully aware that it was an extraordinary example of collecting and culture of the end of the 19th century. Alongside the precise will to preserve and care for the fruit of the collecting activities of their ancestors was not just the desire to open the home in via Gesù to the public, but also to make it a museum that the public could visit and enjoy.