Urban Futures: Public Histories and Gentrification in Contemporary Muralism in Italy

A talk by Francesca Billiani (The University of Manchester).

New muralism is the site-specific production of public artworks by artists in dialogue with local communities, polities and histories. Spreading globally from the Americas in the 1990s, it has transcended its aesthetic origins, influencing design trends in often-controversial public and private urban regeneration projects, while also addressing themes of social and economic inequality. In my talk, I will present the preliminary results of the Leverhulme-funded research project New Muralism: Urban Futures Through the Arts in Italy (2025-2028), by focusing on two case studies which illustrate and problematise on the one hand the role played by public histories in this type of artistic expression (Milan) and on the other the issue of gentrification through the arts (Taranto). To this end, I will discuss issues concerning public funding, access to resources, aesthetic trends and the limits of gentrification.

Francesca Billiani is Professor of Italian at the University of Manchester where she teaches contemporary Italian literature and culture. Her research focuses on the Fascist period, literary journals, modernism, history of publishing, and intellectual history. She is the author of a monograph on the politics of translation in Italy (Culture nazionali e narrazioni straniere, Italia 1903-1943), co-author of a monograph on architecture and the novel during the Fascist regime (Architecture and the Novel under the Italian Fascist Regime, 2019), and author of Fascist Modernism in Italy. Arts and Regimes is out with I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2021. She is currently writing a short monograph on the geographies and histories of Public art in Italy in the 20^th century. She is Principal Investigator of the Leverhulme-funded research project Urban Futures Through the Arts in Italy (2025-28).