IED Milan Libraries had the honour of participating in the prestigious conference
Il rumore della carta. Interdisciplinary dialogues on personal and archival collections, held in Trento from 1 to 3 December 2025 at the Bruno Kessler Foundation.
The presentation by Roberta Lasio and Marcello Proietto, entitled
Personal collections as witnesses of creativity: two case studies in the Milan libraries of the Istituto Europeo di Design, offered an in-depth analysis of two significant personal collections preserved in our Libraries: the
Franca Sozzani Collection (1950–2016), the historic editor of Vogue Italia in the 1990s, focused particularly on fashion and photography; and the
GianCarlo Montebello Collection (1941–2020), a renowned jewellery designer and brother-in-law of Arnaldo and Giò Pomodoro, related to goldsmith art.
The primary objective of the presentation was to illustrate in detail the characteristics and value of these collections, providing a critical reading of their significance both from a bibliographic-documentary perspective and from a historical-cultural standpoint.
In an era in which accessibility to sources is essential for research and innovation, these collections represent a valuable resource for scholars and enthusiasts alike, with the potential
to promote the dissemination of knowledge and strengthen the role of the Library as a centre for interdisciplinary research, where different fields of knowledge meet and enrich each other.
The conference proceedings will be published in 2026, and recordings will also be made available.