Who is Leonardo Bison

How Italy's autonomous museums fared in 2023

Comprehensive statistical data on state museum institutions in the year 2023 were released in November. Beyond the generic releases issued already months ago (visitors are growing, by a little, and receipts are growing by a lot, thanks in part toincr...
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Has the Carrara Academy in Bergamo become unmanageable?

Even the most attentive observers of the museum and art world are struggling to follow the events surrounding Bergamo's Accademia Carrara, an institution founded in 1781 at the behest of Giacomo Carrara, which became a civic museum in 1958 and a publ...
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A Picasso rediscovered in Pompeii? What are the still unsolved doubts

On Sept. 30, as usually happens when faced with proposed attributions with a rocambolic history behind them, a good part of the Italian media reported the news of a rediscovered Picasso, recognized as such after decades in which it had remained on di...
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The Lion of St. Mark was a Chinese monster: what are the implications of the Venetian discovery

La news is so surprising and unsettling that, a week after the announcement (which took place June 11 an international conference in Venice) the world of historians and art historians still kept comments to a minimum. The statue of the lion of St. Ma...
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Zuchtriegel surprisingly reopens debate on Pompeii's eruption! August or October?

In a post on his socials on August 24, Pompeii Archaeological Park director Gabriel Zuchtriegel recalled theeruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79 A .D ."On August 24, 79 A.D., the eruption of Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum," Zuchtriegel r...
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The Belvedere Torso, a jewel of the Vatican that also captivated Michelangelo

Walking through the endless corridors of the Vatican Museums, now filled with visitors even on winter Tuesday mornings, it is not easy to focus on the most extraordinary works, to grasp the difference between wonder and masterpiece, between the parti...
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The media has a (big) problem with attribution in art

On May 14, at the Foreign Press Room at Palazzo Grazioli in Rome, a scholar of Renaissance art, Amel Olivares, told the journalists present that after an eight-year search, she had identified an alleged new work by Michelangelo, kept in a vault in Ge...
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The Museum of Ancient Ships in Pisa, one of the most important museums on the sea in antiquity in the world

On the Lungarno Simonelli in Pisa, inside what used to be the Arsenali Medicei, the Museum of Ancient Ships will be located as of 2019. A name that will perhaps say little to many, but which in reality hides one of the richest and best-kept archaeolo...
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