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 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.

MAXXI L'Aquila opened to the public on 3 June.

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.”

Emperor Constantine reunited with long-lost index finger at the Capitoline Museums.

CONSTANTINE STATUE REUNITED WITH LONG-LOST FINGER

Rome’s colossal bronze hand of Roman emperor Constantine has had its index finger remounted after the missing fragment was sent from the Louvre. The operation followed the collaboration of the Parisian museum where the section of bronze finger was discovered in 2018. The 38cm-long piece, in the collection of the Louvre since 1860, was revealed to be the upper part of an index finger after being mistakenly listed as a toe. The discovery was made by Aurelia Azema who studied the object for her doctorate on ancient welding techniques for large bronze statues, reported at the time by The Art Newspaper. Azema correctly identified that the “toe” was probably Constantine’s missing finger and, when a 3D replica was sent to the Capitoline Museums, it turned out to be a perfect fit. In addition to the bronze hand, the museums house a giant head, a sphere and a left forearm from the statue of Constantine which was 12 metres high and dates to the early fourth century. These fragments were kept in the papal collection at the Lateran Palace before Pope Sixtus IV gave them to the Capitoline Museums in 1471 along with other bronzes. It is not known how the bronze finger subsequently came into the hands of the 19th-century Italian art collector Marquis Giampietro Campana, before making its way to the Louvre in 1860. The long-lost finger was reunited with the hand using a “non-invasive” procedure, the museums director Claudio Parisi Perisce told Rome newspaper Il Messaggero.The return of the finger is believed to be part of a “long-term, multi-year loan” according to news agency ANSA.

STOLEN FRESCOES RETURNED TO POMPEII

The Pompeii archaeological park has welcomed the return of six fresco fragments stolen from the ruins of ancient Roman villas, recovered thanks to Italy’s carabinieri unit for the protection of cultural heritage. Three of the fragments had been stolen from the Villa Arianna and Villa S. Marco in Stabiae, an ancient city located about 4 km south-west of Pompeii. It is believed the theft occurred in the 1970s with the stolen relics exported illegally and purchased in the 1990s by American, Swiss and English antique dealers, according to the statement released by the archaeological park. The fragments feature a dancing female figure carrying a tray, a flute-playing cherub and a woman’s face. The three other retrieved pieces of fresco had been removed from the suburban villa of Civita Giuliana, north of the main Pompeii site, where last November archaeologists discovered the bodies of two men who perished in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. More recently Civita Giuliana made headlines after the discovery of an almost intact four-wheeled processional carriage. The excavation project at Civita Giuliana began in 2017 in a bid to end the pillaging of cultural heritage by tomb raiders who had dug an illegal network of tunnels in the area.