Viafarini was established in 1991 as a non profit organization, taking the American examples and the European Kunstverein as models. This concept was new to Italy at that time, and among the most innovatory ideas were the exhibition space conceived as a project room, the building up of international relationships and its management based on collaboration between private and public bodies.

The first two events, Immagini proiettate and Membership Viafarini, correspond respectively with the foundation of the Artists Archive and the starting of a membership program as a form of support for the association.
The artists that joined Viafarini in its enterprise from the very beginning were many: Piero Almeoni, Mario Airò, Stefano Arienti, Vanessa Beecroft, Francesco Bernardi, Ivo Bonacorsi, Alberto Callari, Pasquale Campanella, Pietro Capogrosso, Manlio Caropreso, Gabriella Casiraghi, Maurizio Cattelan, Loris Cecchini, Marco Cingolani, Manuela Cirino, Gianluca Codeghini, Daniela De Lorenzo, Paola Di Bello, Gabriele Di Matteo, Maurizio Donzelli, Stefano Dugnani, Chiara Dynys, Fac-Simile, Salvatore Falci, Emilio Fantin, Carlo Ferraris, Andrea Fogli, Antonia Fontana, Stefano Fontana, Federico Fusi, Marcello Gianoli, Bernardo Giorgi, Hossein Golba, Nazzareno Guglielmi, Komagata Katsuya, Massimo Kaufmann, Dimitris Kozaris, Mauro Maffezzoni, Mala Arti Visive, Marcello Maloberti, Margherita Manzelli, Roberto Marossi, Miltos Manetas, Eva Marisaldi, Maurizio Mercuri, Pino Modica, Liliana Moro, Antonella Ortelli, Marco Paternostro, Alessandro Pessoli, Cesare Pietroiusti, Leonardo Pivi, Luca Quartana, Mariagrazia Rosin, Cristina Ruffoni, Bernhard Rüdiger, Laura Ruggeri, Sabrina Sabato, Sante Scardillo, Franco Silvestro, Gregorio Spini, Federica Thiene, Alessandra Tortarolo, Adriano Trovato, Maurizio Turchet, Massimo Uberti, Enzo Umbaca, Vedovamazzei, Carla Vendrami, Wurmkos, Alberto Zanazzo.
It is also thanks to the support by volunteers and numerous artists and art critics – among them Roberto Daolio, Alessandra Galasso, Alessandra Galletta, Alberto Garutti, Francesca Pasini, Marco Senaldi and Angela Vettese – that the activities of the first years were made possible.

In 1994 started the close collaboration with Careof, the only other non profit space in the Milanese area, located in Cusano Milanino, in the city’s outskirts.
The following year the Youth Department of the Milan City Council starts an agreement, according to which Viafarini would provide a series of promotion and documentation services addressed to young visual artists. From 1995 to 2005 the agreement has been renewed for seven times. This made the Careof & Viafarini Documentation Center for Visual Arts come to life, with an Artists Archive with a portfolio service, a specialized Library and video library, an information service about study and job opportunities called ArtBox, all services accessible from the web.
Careof & Viafarini’s activities received funding also from the Region Lombardy and the Province of Milan, which makes the Documentation Center the most advanced in Italy for its information technology and the most extensive source of information about Italian contemporary art in the web.

In 1997 Viafarini undertook a new project called Viafarini Fund, a program aiming at awakening public interest in the need for fundraising to support art projects. The committee included Angela Vettese, Pierluigi Sacco and Patrizia Brusarosco.

In 2001 Italian Area was launched, an online database of Italian emerging artists. It is a first step towards the idea to create a “Museum without Centre”, a network of Italian art organizations dedicated to the promotion of young contemporary artists. In the year 2000 the project had been awarded the Premio Cenacolo-Editoria e Innovazione issued by Assolombarda (entrepreneurial association), and the publishing companies Il Sole-24 Ore, Mediaset, Mondadori and Rcs Editori.
Since 2003, thanks to agreements with foundations and organizations based in other Italian cities, the Careof & Viafarini Documentation Centre gathers portfolios by artists from all over Italy, making the Milanese Archive more and more a point of reference at national level.
Since 2004, the Artists Archive and Italian Area receive the support of the Chambers of Commerce of Milan and of Turin, a strong impulse to the project as it increased both the amount of information and the accessibility to the international public through its English translation.

After more than fifteen years of activity, Viafarini was awarded the American Center Foundation Grant and – together with Careof – is recognized to be the most important independent contemporary art space in Italy, as came out of the research “Non di sola arte”, commissioned by the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation and Unicredit in 2007.
In 2007 starts also the first collaboration with a private institutional sponsor, the company Gemmo, leader in the fields of technological plants and Facility Management.

With the 2007/2008 season a new important chapter opens up in the association’s history: in April 2008 Viafarini and Careof open their new premises at the Fabbrica del Vapore, where they were awarded a new space through an international open competition launched in the year 2000 by the Municipality of Milan, Youth Department. Here they also inaugurate the DoCVA Documentation Center for Visual Arts.