Art leaves the Accademia
and meets Bar Brera

In Brera art does not belong to museums and lecture rooms alone. It lives in the streets, crosses the courtyards and sits at the tables of the places that have always animated the district.

From this shared identity comes the partnership between Bar Brera and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera: a project designed to bring artistic training into dialogue with one of the best known and busiest places in the area.

Signed on 29 June and presented publicly inOctober 2023, the collaboration was conceived by Daniele Cardone, Liborio Navarra and Enzo Colella to promote cultural, artistic and social projects able to involve students, teachers, residents and visitors of the district.

The first meeting, inside a glass

The first project born from the partnership was dedicated to the The Brera Cocktail, a creation inspired by the colors, the history and the atmosphere of the district.

The Accademia students Manuel Ricciardi and Massimo Pugliese were asked to interpret it through two different languages. Ricciardi worked with 3D modeling and digital composition; Pugliese chose traditional drawing and colored pencil.

Two works, different in technique and sensibility, joined by the same question: how do you tell Brera in a single image?

That first experiment opened a wider path, in which the venue became a place where students' ideas can meet a real audience.

From collaboration to projects

In March 2024 Bar Brera gave awards to the students who had worked on the images for the cocktails of the venue and of its partners, including a glass designed for Fratelli Branca Distillerie.

Then came the Panettone dell’Arte, made together with Pasticceria Martesana. The box, inspired by a Christmas music box and designed by the young artist Silvia Rosa, turned a symbol of Milanese tradition into an object to keep and to talk about.

In June 2025 the collaboration produced Baraonda, a digital exhibition of works by students of the Visual Arts Department, led by professor Dany Vescovi. Screens outside and projections inside the venue built a continuous flow of images, colors and details, bringing young art into the daily rhythm of the city.

An urban living room for creativity

For generations Bar Brera has been a meeting point for artists, students, writers and passers-by. The partnership with the Accademia renews that vocation and gives it a contemporary form.

The bar becomes an informal exhibition space, an open workshop and a place where young artists can measure themselves against an audience. The Accademia, in turn, extends its presence beyond the lecture rooms and finds in the district living ground to experiment on.

The two institutions are a few steps apart. Their collaboration makes the distance between art and daily life shorter still.

Because in Brera art is not only looked at: it is met.