The idea for the Microcollection Museum came to Elisa Bollazzi, now its Director, on 24 May 1990 when she was visiting the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and – almost by chance – picked up a few fragments that had accidentally fallen onto the floor from a fantastic work by Anish Kapoor. These “microparticles”, overlooked by everyone else, opened up a whole new world - an illumination! They triggered a completely fresh approach to meandering from gallery to gallery, from one museum to another, around the art circuit in Italy and elsewhere in the world. From now on the search was for new “microacquisitions” that would otherwise be trodden underfoot and chucked out with the rubbish!

Microcollection now boasts hundreds of fragments of works of contemporary art, that Elisa Bollazzi and her accomplices have saved from oblivion. The team has been working together for the Museum since 1990 and are all convinced believers in the whole idea.

The fragments are mounted on ordinary laboratory slides, and can be viewed under a microscope. The collection constitutes a patrimony of considerable artistic and cultural worth, and the public seems to be showing increasing curiosity and appreciation of this new artistic experience.

Future acquisitions will follow specific research criteria, and the Museum staff take great care to keep the archives regularly updated - with almost scientific rigor!