Brr…It is cold(ish) and damp. Perfect weather to put on a raincoat and walk swiftly to the nearest gallery or museum to take in some art while dodging the rain. There is no lack of exhibitions to choose from in Italy just now and many of them, from Turin’s Triennale to Rovereto’s Secolo del Jazz, are, to take a leaf out of the Italian Touring Club’s guidebooks, ‘worth a trip.’ So much so, in fact, that it is hard to choose only a handful to visit. But then, it is even harder to explore all of them before February, when most of them will close their doors. So if, like me, you are pushed for time, here are the three must-see exhibitions at this time of the year. If you have a bit more time, though, I have suggested a couple of others that you may also like to include in your art tour.
T2. Torino Triennale Tremusei, Turin, Piedmont
T2 is unusual under many viewpoints. The name, for starters—it is called T2 even though it really has three Ts—Torino, Triennale, and Tremusei (the number 2 actually marks the fact that this is the second edition of the event).
The location—works are laid across three museums, one of which, Castello di Rivoli, is just outside town.
But most of all, the pieces on shows. Because T2 is one of the most idiosyncratic contemporary arts exhibitions ever to take place in Italy.
This year’s theme is Fifty Moons of Saturn. It pulls together works from two major artists, Paul Chan and Olafur Eliasson, and fifty emerging ones, who use melancholy, of which Saturn is a symbol, as a source of inspiration and rebellion.
The artists ponder on the difficult, changing times we are living and their reflections often take extraordinary shapes—like Eliasson’s planetary dark and light, which capture visitors at Castello di Rivoli, and Chan’s video installation on the Marquis de Sade at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.
In the best contemporary art tradition, this is an exhibition that raises both eyebrows and questions.
T2 takes place at Castello di Rivoli, Piazza Mafalda di Savoia, Rivoli; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Via Modane 16, Turin; and Palazzina della Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti, Viale Diego Balsamo Crivelli 11, Turin, between 6 November 2008 and 1 February 2009, from Tuesday to Sunday 9am to 7pm. Admissions are €15, concessions €12.
For more modern art, try Il Secolo del Jazz, at MART, Corso Bettini 43, Rovereto, from 15 November 2008 to 15 February 2009. The Jazz years are explored through art, cinema, music and photographs from Picasso to Basquiat. Open from Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 6pm (Friday until 9pm). Admissions €10, concessions €7.
Da Rembrandt a Vermeer, Rome, Lazio
Da Rembrandt a Vermeer is a cavalcade across the very best of 17th century Flemish and Dutch paintings. Van Dyck, Rubens, de Hooch are all there, as are, of course, Rembrandt and Vermeer, which lend their name to the programme.
This unprecedented array of masterpieces, pulled off by the Fondazione Roma and curated by Bernd Lindemann of Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie, intends to explore how painters started depicting life at home in response to the new social values of 17th century Holland.
From Rembrandt’s The Money Changer to Vermeer’s Woman with a Pearl Necklace, the 55 paintings reveal how the rise of the bourgeoisie—and the artists’ mundane but pressing need to sell their work to a new customer base—engendered a new art style in the Netherlands.
Dutch artists focused on everyday interiors, still lifes and portraits of the middle class in an absolute innovation over previous centuries—and in marked contrast to the grand, triumphalist but somehwat antiquated paintings that still prevailed in aristocracy-lead France, Italy and Spain.
Da Rembrandt a Vermeer is at Il Museo del Corso, Via del Corso 320, Rome, from 11 November 2008 to 15 February 2009, from 10am to 8pm, every day except Monday. Admissions €9, concessions €7. For more information visit www.museodelcorso.it.
For more great foreign art in Italy, try Turner e l’Italia, an exploration of Turner’s relationship with Italy, at Palazzo Diamanti, Corso Ercole I d'Este, 21, Ferrara, from 16 November to 22 February 9am-7pm. Admissions €10, concessions €8.
Ercolano. Tre secoli di scoperte, Naples, Campania
Chance and the will of a king are behind the discovery of Herculaneaum, the thriving Roman town obliterated in one night by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Buried under debris, the town was forgotten until, in the early 18th century, works to dig a well in Resina, the small village that had been built over the hidden Roman ruins, unveiled some priceless relics. But it was Charles III, king of Naples and, later, of Spain, who gave impulse to the archaeological works, giving them his blessing and marking the opening of the dig.
Over the course of the next three hundred years, the Roman town emerged from the belly of the earth, revealing perfectly-preserved villas and shops, baths and theatre, fora and gym.
The history of Hercolaneum and the works that brought it back to the world are now celebrated in Ercolano. Tre secoli di scoperte, at Naples’ Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Gigantic sculptures of gods, heroes and emperors bask in vivid light at the beginning of the tour, a sign of the early glory of Herculaneum.
But the lights become progressively dimmer as the exhibition explores everyday life in the city, painting portraits of its people, until, at the end, darkness wraps in a silent embrace the remains of men, women and children killed by poisonous fumes on their way to the sea and a safety which they never managed to reach.
Ercolano. Tre secoli di scoperte takes place at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Piazza Museo 19, from 16 October 2008 to 13 April 2009, 9am to 7.30pm, Wednesday to Monday (closed on 25 December and 1 January). For more information, visit http://www.marketplace.it/museo.nazionale/. Tickets €6.50, concessions, €3.25.
For more Roman art and culture, try Giulio Cesare. L’uomo, le imprese, il mito, where a collection of sculptures, mosaics, coins, frescoes, jewels and paintings tels the story of Rome’s greatest man. At Chiostro del Bramante, Via Della Pace, Rome, from Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-8pm (Saturday and Sunday until 9pm). Tickets €10, concessions €7-9.
