On the occasion of the Archivissima 2024 festival and the Night of the Archives, the Historical Archives of Politecnico di Milano present the event "Un archivio tutto per sé. Archivi di donne al Politecnico di Milano".

The event will feature Marisa Galbiati, Francesco Guida, Associate Professor at the Department of Design, and Roberto Dulio, the Rector's Delegate for Politecnico's Archival, Library, and Museum System.

The archives on display:

• In 1977, fashion photographer Elsa Haertter (1908–1995) published the volume "Incontro con la saggezza," a representation of a keen and fascinated gaze on India and the Eastern world: from the pages of diaries, notebooks, and agendas, which accompany Elsa's work and life from 1922 to 1991, images of places, people, clothing, fashion shows, and travels emerge. Today, these materials, and Elsa's photographic production, are collected in the archival collection dedicated to her, which reveals itself as a time capsule to narrate the activities, interests, work methods—passions of this photographer, her way of looking at fashion, and the places hosting her shots.

• Another archive, that of Liliana Grassi (1923–1985), tells a different but equally intense story. Graduated in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano, where she taught, Liliana Grassi worked for almost forty years on the restoration of the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan, and since 1958, she was responsible for it: notes, writings, and drawings tell the story of a challenging project, where she had to merge the ancient and the new of the State University; they testify to a fervent passion for this architecture and its significance: building a future that becomes present.

• Raffaella Crespi (1929–2011), also graduated from and taught at the Politecnico di Milano, was an architect, exhibition designer, and industrial designer. Drawings, slides, photographs, and notes, collected in the Crespi-Grisotti archive, take us back to her experiences as editor of the magazine "Architettura/Cantiere," as president of the Order of Architects of the Province of Milan, as a professor of Industrial Design, but also to her numerous travels.

• The Albe and Lica Steiner archive traces the professional activity and the private and political life of Lica Covo Steiner (1914–2008), a graphic designer with a strong vocation for teaching and social commitment, a partisan courier during World War II, and founder, with her husband, of the LAS photo-graphic studio.

The Historical Archives of Politecnico di Milano invite you to listen to the stories of archives that testify to the passions to which the women who produced them dedicated themselves, and to reflect on the meaning and importance of leaving a testimony, an account of what has been done, and what this means for women.

Through stories, dialogues, and looks at photographs, notes, and drawings, we will discover together how these archives for themselves are now archives for us, not only precious testimonies of activities carried out with passion but pieces to reconstruct an atlas of lived stories, often on the edge, of achievements made, precious both for understanding the present and for designing the future.

You can find the registration form here. For more information, write to archivio@polimi.it