Maria Grazia Mattei
Founder and President of MEET, the Italian Center for Digital Culture (Milan)
A journalist, an art critic and a digital evangelist, Maria Grazia Mattei has been investigated digital culture since 1982.
In 1995 she founded Mattei Digital Communication, a center for research, creation and dissemination of new media and communications.
In 2005 she launched Meet the Media Guru (MtMG), a platform to promote public dissemination on innovation and digital culture. In 14 years MtMG has brought over 100 thoughts leaders to Italy, including Zygmunt Bauman, Edgar Morin, Manuel Castells, Joi Ito Don Norman, John Maeda, Lawrence Lessig and many others.
In 2018, with the support of Fondazione Cariplo, one the largest charitable foundation in Europe, Mattei has founded MEET, the first Italian center for digital culture. MEET promotes meetings, exhibitions, workshops and digital performances with a humanistic perspective on innovation and digital transformation. In Autumn 2019, MEET will open its building at the heart of Milan.
Mattei has been the Italian curator for Pixar retrospectives, set up at PAC in Milan in 2011, at Palazzo del Te in Mantua in 2012 and at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in 2018.
All long her career, Mattei has promoted numerous initiatives dedicated to the awareness and diffusion of digital culture in collaboration with international organizations including Venice Biennale (Italy), Siggraph (USA) and Imagina (France).
Mattei is on the board of directors for Artemide, a major Italian lighting design company.
Mattei designed and curated A tu per tu con la cultura digitale book series, published by Egea – Università Bocconi Editore. She co-authored Future Ways of Living and Future Ways of Living | Living in a Global Village, both published by 24OreCultura.
For over twenty years Mattei has encouraged and promoted cultural and professional exchanges between Italian and North American creative industries. For her commitment, in 2017 Mattei was honoured by the Embassy of Canada to Italy with the Canada-Italy Innovation Award, aimed at professionals who strengthen the links between Canada and Italy in the fields of science, technology and innovation.
Mattei earned her bachelor in Art Critic from Università degli Studi di Milano. She was born in Pisa and has been living in Milan for forty years.
