The Cold War culture clash between Capitalism and Communism is spotlighted in a sweeping exhibition opening in this northeast Italian town at the end of March.
Created in collaboration with London's Victoria & Albert Museum, 'Cold War Art and Design in a Divided World 1945-1970' uses 250 objects from art, science, fashion and everyday life to explore the rivalry between East and West during the post-war period.
There is an array of items on show from countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain: the US, the USSR, the UK, Cuba, East Germany, West Germany, Italy, Poland, France and Czechoslovakia.
Central to the exhibit is the Cold War's two competing concepts of modernity and how these played out in every field imaginable: politics, the military, espionage, space travel, post-war building reconstruction, fashion, architecture, scientific innovation and the arms race.
The show contrasts alternative architectural visions from the former segments of Berlin: Stalinallee in the East and the Interbau building projects in the West.
The nuclear threat is explored through drawing, paintings and cinema, while another section looks at the space race and technology.
One of the show's highlights is a reconstruction of the spherical satellite that launched the space age in 1957, the Sputnik 1, which will hang at the start of the exhibition.
Other space race attractions include Soviet photographs showing the first views of earth from space, the interior of NASA space shuttles, experimental space suits, and architecture, art and fashion inspired by science fiction.
Posters and films document youth uprisings, from Vietnam anti-war demonstrations in the US, to Paris's 1968 student movement and the Prague Spring protests.
Although the exhibit encompasses work from both sides of the divide, the Western works will be more familiar to most visitors, many of whom are bound to be attracted by the number of post-war cultural milestones on display.
The show includes Stanley Kubrick's films, Robert Rauschenberg's paintings, Pablo Picasso's ceramics, Paco Rabanne's fashion, Charles and Ray Eames's fibreglass furniture, Le Courbusier's architectural sketches, and a host of iconic technology, such as Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes and Braun's T1000 world radio.
The exhibition, which arrives from a successful run in London, opens in the Trento and Rovereto Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MART) on March 28 and runs until July 26.