Art is woman. Bologna dedicates an exhibition to female protagonists of art, photography and design

TheBologna Musei Institution ’s initiative entitled L’arte è donna (Art is a Woman ) kicks off,opening its venues to writers, art historians, journalists and scholars who, during a series of meetings, will deal with the theme of women in art, photography and design, starting from the biographies of famous protagonists of the past and contemporary times.

Intent of the review Art is a Woman. Meetings between books and works in Bologna’s museums, to be held between April 9 and June 4, 2019, and from September to December 2019, is in fact to bring authors of biographies and scholars to museum halls to delve into the stories of women who have made art a profession, a passion and a reason for living.

Each meeting will also include a guided tour of the permanent collections or temporary exhibitions underway in the museums to the presentation of a book with discussion open to the public; speakers will include not only the author of the book but also scholars who are experts on the artist or the historical context to which she belongs. During the museum tour, those works that further tell the story of the artist in question will be explored.
Leading the meetings will be journalist Lara Crinò, who curated the review.

Art is a Woman. Meetingsbetween books and works in Bologna’s museums is being held with the support of Hera and in collaboration with the Bologna Reading Pact and the Women’s Center/Italian Women’s Library, while the graphic design is being done by students of the three-year degree course in Communication Design at IAAD Institute of Applied Art and Design in Bologna.

The first four meetings (April 9, May 8 and 28, June 4, 2019) will be dedicated to graphic designer Lica Covo Steiner, painters Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana, impressionists Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès, Marie Braquemond and Mary Cassatt, and photographer Vivian Maier.
The meetings to be held from September to December will instead cover Luciana Frassati Gawronska, Luisa Casati, Peggy Guggenheim, Artemisia Gentileschi, Frida Kahlo, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Charlotte Salomon, Berthe Morisot, Suzanne Valadon and Bella Chagall.

All talks will begin with a free guided tour at 5 p.m. A presentation will follow at 5:45 p.m. Free admission, reservations recommended by e-mailing istituzionebolognamusei@comune.bologna.it by the day before the meetings.

Below is the schedule for the first four meetings:

Tuesday, April 9, 2019
MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art of Bologna.
5 p.m., Sala delle Ciminiere: guided tour of the exhibition Mika Rottenberg, led by Lorenzo Balbi
5:45 p.m. Conference room: Lica Covo Steiner. Art, graphics and commitmentpresentationof the book Lica Covo Steiner by Anna Steiner (Corraini Edizioni), in the presence of the author. Speakers: Anna and Marzia Corraini. Lara Crinò coordinates.

Lica Covo Steiner, a graphic designer, was one of the most innovative figures in editorial design in postwar Italy. Documents, interviews, photographs and personal notes reconstruct her sentimental and professional association with her husband Albe Steiner and her friendship with personalities such as Max Huber, Giancarlo De Carlo, Gillo Dorfles or Italo Calvino. A testament to the civic commitment, dedication to teaching and dogged and exemplary idealism of a woman who was among the great protagonists of Milanese culture in the second half of the last century. Following the volume Albe Steiner, Corraini has produced a publication on Lica, signed by her daughter Anna, an architect and lecturer at the Milan Polytechnic.

Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Municipal Art Collections(Palazzo d’Accursio
5 p.m., Municipal Art Collections: guided tour Female Portraits in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, led by Silvia Battistini
5:45 p.m., Farnese Chapel: Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana, the ladies with the fan
presentation of the book La dama con il ventaglio by Giovanna Pierini (Electa), in the presence of the author. Speaker: Vera Fortunati. Coordinator: Lara Crinò.

Sofonisba Anguissola, an atypical artist of noble birth, lady-in-waiting to the queen at the court of Philip II of Spain and a highly talented portraitist of members of the Spanish royal family, earned her freedom on a personal and financial level as well. Giovanna Pierini has reconstructed her life in The Lady with the Fan. Sofonisba’s story lends itself to telling the story of our Renaissance and its female artists: in particular Lavinia Fontana, from Bologna, who also lived at the turn of the two centuries.

Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Museo Civico Medievale
5 p.m., Museo Civico Medievale: guided tour The great women of Bologna at the Museo Medievale: from Novella to Properzia de’ Rossi, led by Paolo Cova
5:45 p.m., Lapidary: Impressionists. Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès, Marie Braquemond, Mary Cassatt
presentation of the book Impressioniste. Mary Cassat, Marie Braquemond, Eva Gonzalès, Berthe Morisot by Martina Corgnati (Nomos Editions), in the presence of the author. Speaker: Lucia Corrain. Coordinator: Lara Crinò.

The story of the women artists that the incredible media success of the Impressionist movement left in the shadows is only beginning to be told in recent years. Berthe Morisot, the best known and most gifted, wife of Edouard Manet’s brother who left some famous portraits of her, is the focus of a monographic exhibition now underway at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris until September 22, 2019, the first major anthology to restore her to the place she deserves among the movement’s greats. The volume sheds new light on the story of her life and those of painters Mary Cassat, Marie Braquemond, and Eva Gonzalès.

Tuesday, June 4, 2019
Museum of Industrial Heritage
5 p.m., guided tour of the exhibition Vocational training, women’s work and industry in Bologna, 1946-1970, led by Alessio Zoeddu
5:45 p.m., Auditorium Hall: Vivian Maier and the Secret of Photography
Presentation of the book From your eyes only by Francesca Diotallevi (Neri Pozza Editore), in the presence of the author. Speaker: Patrizia Pulga. Coordinator: Lara Crinò.

The figure of American Vivian Maier, a self-taught “street” photographer, author of thousands and thousands of “stolen” shots that chronicle American life from the 1960s to the 1990s, becomes an opportunity to discuss the role of photography in the twentieth-century imagination, its intersection with the applied arts, and its changes in the age of social media and selfies. It starts with the biography From Your Eyes Only that Francesca Diotallevi dedicated to her.

For info: www.museibologna.it

Pictured: Lica Covo Steiner

Art is woman. Bologna dedicates an exhibition to female protagonists of art, photography and design

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