Massimo VALSECCHI

Art collector, former gallerist. Professor of History of Industrial Design. Founder and owner of the Palazzo Butera Foundation. Palermo, Italy.

Massimo Valsecchi is an art collector, former gallerist, and academic. His figure combines deep expertise in the international cultural market with a pioneering vision of art as a tool for social transformation and redemption. Valsecchi's career in the cultural landscape began in the early 1970s, when he took over the direction of the famous Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa (1971-1973). In 1974, he decided to open his own personal gallery in Milan, a space created to house and promote his already vast collection of contemporary and historical art, built over time through a direct and constant dialogue with numerous artists. Alongside his activity in the art market and business, Valsecchi cultivated a solid career in teaching and scientific-artistic research as a professor of History of Industrial Design. For many years, he carried out his profession in major European capitals, including London and Milan. In 2016, he decided to move to Palermo, where, together with his wife Francesca Frua De Angeli, he purchased the 18th-century Palazzo Butera – one of the city's most iconic and majestic aristocratic residences, located in the ancient Arab district of the Kalsa. He did so with the ambitious vision of transforming the palace into a multifunctional laboratory for cultural experimentation and a catalyst for social development in a neighborhood historically marked by decay, which is today at the center of Palermo's cultural rebirth.