[11][12] Working as a translator and editor while at university, in 1996 Gioni founded Trax, one of the first Italian digital art and culture magazines,[13] which published writings by, among others, Tracey Emin, Gilbert and George, W.J.
Mitchell, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Chris Ofili, Matthew Slotover, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kara Walker, David Foster Wallace, Edmund White, among others.
[22][9] Since 2002, Gioni has been directing the Nicola Trussardi Foundation, which he transformed into a nomadic museum that organizes exhibitions by contemporary artists in forgotten buildings, public monuments and abandoned palazzos in the city of Milan.
[28][29] During his tenure as artistic director, he has curated projects by Allora and Calzadilla, Paweł Althamer, Darren Almond, John Bock, Maurizio Cattelan, Martin Creed, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Elmgreen and Dragset, Urs Fischer, Fischli and Weiss, Cyprien Gaillard, Ragnar Kjartansson, Sarah Lucas, Ibrahim Mahama, Paola Pivi, Pipilotti Rist, Anri Sala, and Tino Sehgal.
[40][3][4] At the New Museum Massimiliano Gioni has curated solo exhibitions by Ed Atkins, John Akomfrah, Paweł Althamer, Lynda Benglis, Paul Chan, Sarah Charlesworth, Roberto Cuoghi, Tacita Dean, Nicole Eisenman, Urs Fischer, Hans Haacke, Camille Henrot, Carsten Höller, Kahlil Joseph, Ragnar Kjartansson, Klara Liden, Sarah Lucas, Goshka Macuga, Gustav Metzger, Marta Minujin, Albert Oehlen, Chris Ofili, Carol Rama, Pipilotti Rist, Peter Saul, Jim Shaw, Anri Sala, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and Nari Ward, among others.
[41][42][4] Gioni's group shows – which include "After Nature", "Ghosts in the Machine", "Here and Elsewhere", "NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star", "Ostalgia", and "The Keeper" – have become signature initiatives of the New Museum program.
[9][43] Writing about 'Ostalgia' in 2021, art critic Jerry Saltz described Gioni as "master of his own form of large-scale exhibition as narrative, time machine, pleasurable pedagogy, historical potboiler come to life, and insight.
[53] Gioni was also part of the commission of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism that selected Giuseppe Penone's "Leaves of Stone" to be the first contemporary artwork to be permanently installed in the historic center of the city of Rome.
Stories of Global Displacement",[58][59] a collaboration between the New Museum and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and at Museo Jumex in Mexico City he curated "Appearance Stripped Bare: Desire and the Object in the Work of Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons, Even",[60] the first exhibition to bring in dialogue the works of Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons – the show attracted more than 440,240 visitors, making it the most well-attended show in the museum's history and one of the most visited exhibitions of contemporary art in Mexico.
He is the commissioning editor of "2000 Words", a series of monographic books published by the Dakis Joannou Collection and Deste Foundation,[74] with which he has frequently collaborated, curating numerous exhibitions and special projects in Athens.
[88] In 2014, he was part of the selection committee that chose Giuseppe Penone, Nedko Solakov and Liam Gillick as the winners of the European Central Bank’s international competition for site-specific artworks at its headquarters in Frankfurt.