On a working trip to Milan this spring, I kept seeing banners that proclaimed an exhibition of twentieth-century drawing: “Il Disegno del Nostro Secolo.” The elegant graphics of the title were imposed on an impressive list of names: Balla, Beckmann, Boccioni, Chagall, de Chirico, Feininger, Giacometti, Gorky, Kandinsky, Kirchner, Klee, Léger, Matisse, Miró, Modigliani, Morandi, Picasso, Schiele, and more. The name of the institution—the Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta—meant nothing to me, but I was curious enough to make a mental note to see the show if I had time. Besides, it was Morandi that had brought me to Milan in the first place.

What made the visit inevitable was discovering that the Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta was open late, long after the places where I was doing research had closed. As the Michelin Guides say, it was worth the detour—not that it was much of a detour, since the foundation turned out to be conveniently located between the Castello Sforzesco, where Michelangelo’s poignant work in progress, the Rondanini Pieta, is housed, and the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, home base for the company of the brilliant director Giorgio Strehler. The exhibition space itself is new, inaugurated with “Il Disegno del Nostro Secolo” only a few months before my visit, in March of this year. The foundation, established by the publisher Gabriele Mazzotta and named in honor of his father, has existed since 1988, collecting art and “working closely with major European museums,” which seems to mean lending works to exhibitions and