Last Friday in Milan, the event Michelangelo Pistoletto. Il tempo del giudizio took place on the occasion of the inauguration of the eponymous artwork by Michelangelo Pistoletto, acquired by the Lombardy Region and destined to remain permanently on display in the atrium of Palazzo Lombardia.

Hosted at the Auditorium Testori, the event marked a moment of particularly intense exchange, placing contemporary art at the centre of an open dialogue between civil institutions and religious communities, within a shared framework of responsibility and reflection on the present.

Following the institutional greetings by Francesca Caruso, Councillor for Culture of the Lombardy Region, and Raffaele Cattaneo, Undersecretary to the Presidency with responsibility for International and European Relations, leading figures from the major religious traditions present in Italy took the floor: representatives of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. The event concluded with remarks by the President of the Lombardy Region, Attilio Fontana, in the presence of the President of the Italian Senate, Ignazio La Russa. The conference was moderated by curator Francesco Monico.

In his address, Michelangelo Pistoletto offered a reflection intertwining art, science and spirituality, starting from the concept of chance as the origin of the universe and of life itself. A line of thought that finds in the mirror the device capable of making the invisible visible, the tangible and the intangible, space-time and mass-energy. As the artist himself states, spirituality is not an “escape from the world, but a deep immersion in its complexity”: an exercise in awareness that acknowledges the interdependence between the individual and the universe.

This reflection, which places art as a space of awareness and relationship, was taken up on the stage of the Auditorium Testori by the voices of the main religious communities involved and by the Director of the Reggia di Monza. Moderated by Francesco Monico, the meeting thus gave shape to a concrete and plural exchange, capable of translating the artist’s thinking into a shared experience.

For the Hindu tradition, Swami Priyananda and Swami Govinda recalled the value of awareness as a daily practice, emphasising how art can become a tool for harmonising inner life and the world, fostering balance and collective responsibility.

Representing the Italian Buddhist community, Giovanna Giorgetti focused on listening and compassion as political as well as spiritual acts, highlighting the role of art in creating spaces of silence and attention, which are increasingly necessary in a time marked by fragmentation.

For the Catholic Church, Antonio Spadaro reflected on the relationship between faith and imagination, identifying in Pistoletto’s work a device capable of questioning the human being without offering pre-established answers, while opening instead to a shared responsibility toward the future.

The interreligious dialogue was further enriched by the contribution of Yahya Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, who underlined the importance of mutual recognition among faiths as the foundation for authentic coexistence, reading Il tempo del giudizioas a shared space for reflection on the meaning of human action.

Finally, linking the Milanese experience to the path initiated at the Reggia di Monza, Bartolomeo Corsini reaffirmed the role of the cultural institution as a place of mediation and continuity, capable of transforming interreligious dialogue into a lasting and shared process.

The artwork Il tempo del giudizio thus configures a symbolic space in which the major religious traditions are brought into relation through gaze and reflection. Not a judgment understood as condemnation or the assertion of an absolute truth, but as a time of responsibility, choice and reciprocal listening. The installation invites those who move through the space to recognise themselves in the other, overcoming identity-based and cultural boundaries, and transforming aesthetic experience into an act of conscious participation.

The inauguration at Palazzo Lombardia enters into direct dialogue with the path developed at the Reggia di Monza, where the exhibition UR-RA – Unity of Religions – Responsibility of Art, currently on view, has given visual and conceptual form to the principles of the Interreligious Charter of Monza. In the coming months, the Reggia will host new opportunities for exchange and dialogue with religious representatives, strengthening a process that recognises art as a shared ground capable of generating relationships, listening and collective responsibility.

In a historical moment marked by conflicts and polarisation, Il tempo del giudizio thus proposes a different temporality: one grounded in encounter, reflection and the possibility of building, together, a plural future.