ART NEWS MAXXI OPENS NEW ART MUSEUM IN L'AQUILA
MAXXI L’Aquila, the long-awaited contemporary art museum in the Abruzzo capital, was inaugurated by Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini on 28 May ahead of its 3 June opening. The museum, under the management of Rome’s Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, is housed at Palazzo Ardinghelli which underwent extensive restoration, financed with the support of Russia, after L’Aquila’s devastating earthquake in April 2009. The project, stalled by the covid-19 emergency, has seen the complete renovation of the 18th-century Baroque building, formerly the home of culture ministry offices. MAXXI describes the project as offering the community “a new collective place, a platform of cultural creativity, open, shared, at the service of the relaunch of the city.” The opening exhibition, entitled Punto di Equilibrio. Pensiero spazio luce da Toyo Ito a Ettore Spalletti, includes eight new sitespecific installations among 60 works from the MAXXI Collection. For information see www.maxxilaquila.art.
VENICE WELCOMES RETURN OF ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE
When the Venice Architecture Biennale opened on 22 May it signalled one of Italy’s most important “in-person events” since the outbreak of covid-19. The pandemic saw the 2020 edition of the architectural extravaganza being postponed until this year. Curated by Lebanese architect and educator Hashim Sarkis of the MIT School of Architecture, the 17th edition of the biennale has as its title ‘How Will We All Live Together?’ This theme takes on a special signifance given the dramatic events of the last year and many of the projects are a direct response to the new realities of life and design in the covid era. There are a total of 61 national pavilions, with three countries participating for the first time – Grenada, Iraq, Republic of Uzbekistan – and 17 collateral events taking place at the Arsenale and the historic centre of Venice. The following projects have been highlighted by The Architect’s Newspaper. The US pavilion is titled American
Venice Architecture Biennale curator Hashim Sarkis.
38 | June 2021 • Wanted in Rome
MAXXI L'Aquila opened to the public on 3 June.
Framing and comprises a three-storey stick-frame house in homage to American timber construction. Elephant, the Thai pavilion, features a house design inspired by the Kuy, an ethnic group that lives alongside elephants, with space for a human family and their giant animal friend. The Japanese pavilion takes a sustainable approach to the re-use of existing architecture by rebuilding a disassembled house, with different spatial configurations, saving a building from demolition. The Irish pavilion focuses on digital architecture, designing a space for the storage of data infrastructure and cyberspace machinery. For full information and visiting details see Biennale website, www.labiennale.org.
ITALY SCRAPS WEEKEND BOOKINGS FOR SMALLER MUSEUMS
Italy’s smaller museums will no longer require visitors to book in advance for weekend visits after the government announced the easing of the country’s covid-19 restrictions last month. The previous system had obliged visitors to book “at least one day in advance” to visit museums at weekends however this requirement has now been modified following an appeal to the culture ministry, reports Artribune. The measure was intended to reduce covid contagion risks from over-crowding. However smaller museums argued that, due to their lower profile and often remote locations, they relied on impromptu weekend visitors. The appeal, signed by a collection of museum networks in Tuscany, centred on “small museums, often located in historic villages,” with visits described as “for the most part unplanned.” The culture ministry has retained the obligation to reserve weekend visits at least 24 hours ahead for “museums and places of culture that registered more than one million visitors in 2019.” These have been identified as the Pantheon, Colosseum, Pompeii, Uffizi, the Accademia Gallery in Florence and Castel S. Angelo. Culture minister Dario Franceschini described the move as “another step towards a gradual return to normality.”
