Florence Art Week kicks off. Here's what the third edition of the event dedicated to contemporary art has to offer

It will start on September 28, 2023 the third edition of Florence Art Week, the rich calendar of events involving all the most representative Florentine institutions and cultural realities dealing with contemporary art or dialoguing with the languages of the present. 29 cultural institutions involved, 44 events, 32 venues and 11 days of programming, until October 8, all dedicated tocontemporary art.

The Florence Art Week program officially begins on September 28 with the opening of the exhibition at Palazzo Medici Riccardi Depero. Cavalcata fantastica, a project of the Museo Novecento curated by Sergio Risaliti and Eva Francioli that aims to present to the general public the work of Fortunato Depero, starting with the painting Nitrito in velocità, preserved at the Museo Novecento, highlighting the relationship of his work with the Florentine territory (until January 28, 2024).

On Sept. 30, with Temptations , Torments, Trials and Tribulations, the Museo Novecento returns to host a focus on contemporary painting thanks to the works of Cecily Brown. The exhibition, curated by Sergio Risaliti, is intended to be an opportunity to admire a series of previously unpublished works inspired in part by the Temptations of St. Anthony, of which there is a work attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti. The exhibition continues in Palazzo Vecchio with the display of a new work inside the Camerino of Bianca Cappello. Through Feb. 4, 2024.

The Novecento Museum’s rich exhibition calendar continues with the second stage of the major project that Nico Vascellari conceived for the city of Florence and inaugurated last June with his solo exhibition at Forte Belvedere, Melma (until Oct. 8). On Oct. 3, the Salone dei Cinquecento will host a new performance by the artist supported by the twelfth edition of Italian Council, a project of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. The work is a brand new performance involving thirty performers inside in an immersive choreographic action that reflects on the conventions and codes of nonverbal communication.

From Oct. 5, the Museo Novecento also presents Endo, an exhibition by Namsal Siedlecki curated by Sergio Risaliti and Stefania Rispoli, conceived as a site-specific installation in the building’s Renaissance cloister, interpreted as a womb within which energy and matter continually regenerate (through April 3, 2024).

On Friday, Oct. 6 in the Luca Giordano Room of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, there will also be a ceremony for the Renaissance + prize, now in its fourth edition. The prize will be awarded to Laura Colnaghi, Danna and Giancarlo Olgiati, Franca and Lorenzo Pinzauti, Giorgio Fasol, Nicole SaiKalis Bay, Lorenza Sebasti and Marco Pallanti.

Starting Oct. 7, on the other hand, Split Face, the first monographic exhibition in Italy by American artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn set up between Museo Stefano Bardini and Museo Novecento, will be on view. Unseen or recently produced paintings will be exhibited alongside works of Florentine Renaissance portraiture and Italian 20th-century masters (through March 11, 2024).

And again, the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi’s new exhibition, Untrue Unreal, curated by Arturo Galansino, conceived and realized with Anish Kapoor, will open to the public on October 7. A path between historical works and recent productions, including a large installation for the Renaissance courtyard, and monumental installations, which will create a dialogue with architecture (until Feb. 4, 2024).

These appointments are complemented by numerous exhibition projects such as Sheltered Landscapes, a solo exhibition by the generative artist zancan (Michaël Zancan) for the Digital Horizons cycle curated by Serena Tabacchi for Rifugio Digitale (Sept. 28 to Oct. 15, 2023), in which the artist uses space as a tunnel that allows the public to travel inside nature to the coded formulation of it; Gruppo 70. Proposals for a verbo-visual guerrilla, an exhibition organized by Frittelli arte contemporanea under the curatorship of Raffaella Perna to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the birth of Group 70 (from Oct. 7 with opening at 6 p.m. to Jan. 19, 2024); Zoè Gruni’s solo exhibition Motherboard at Galleria Il Ponte (Sept. 28 to Nov. 17, 2023), which is divided into three recent projects (2017-2023): the videos Segunda pele and Fromoso, with a print of some frames, and Motherboard, ten photographs reworked by the artist; Cloud, Goldschmied & Chiari’s unreleased video proposed by Galleria Poggiali (Sept. 30 to Nov. 18, 2023), in which the artists explore the physicality of smoke, its ethereal nature, cinematically fixing its impermanence as if it were a constantly changing sculptural object; the installation The Witnesses. Reflections on Heritage and Memory from Macau by Macanese artist Wong Ka Long, curated by Livia Dubon, for La Portineria - contemporary art projects (Oct. 1 to 15, 2023), made with the support of the Macau Visual Art Zone association: a Wunderkammer that tells private and collective stories of Macau, through a collection of precious ancient statues, personal objects and artist’s creations, which will be joined by an online panel discussion (on Oct. 12, 2023 at 2 pm.00) Heritage Preservation? Reflections between China, Italy and Macau; the Museo Marino Marini presents Andature III, curated by Marcella Cangioli and Antonella Nicola and realized in collaboration with the cultural association Firenze Città Nascosta, which juxtaposes paintings by Helene Appel and installations and drawings by Eva Marisaldi (Oct. 4 to Dec. 24, 2023); from Oct. 5, the project Drawing everyday. Visual Diary of Stefano Chiassai at MAD Murate Art District, curated by Valentina Gensini, with the collaboration of ADI, is enriched with a brand new exhibition room, the Anna Banti Room, where three unpublished tapestries made by the textile manufacturer Bonotto are exhibited (until Oct. 8); finally, from Oct. 7, the Florence Academy of Fine Arts presents the End of the Academic Year 2022-23 Exhibition, with works made by students of all diploma courses, selected by a committee composed of Valentina Gensini, Giovanna Uzzani, Carlo Falciani, Gaia Bindi (until Oct. 21, 2023).

On the borderline between visual arts, dance and performance, from Sept. 30 to Dec. 17, the Virgilio Sieni National Center for Dance Production presents within PIA Palazzina Indiano Arte three projects that trespass into other languages: Jessica Brunelli’s Line, a mobile installation lying on the ground, rigid but at the same time fragile, an extemporaneous realization of a changing path, built with wooden strips painted orange that live in the continuous interaction with the audience; Martina Bacigalupo’s Gulu Real Art Studio brings together a series of portraits found by the artist in the trash can of the oldest photography studio in the city of Gulu, northern Uganda: a collection of faceless prints, scraps salvaged by the artist over two years with the studio’s consent, that make our gaze focus on details related to the body; finally, Valentina Ferrari exhibits her Tactile Polaroids, where films are manipulated by creating moments of collision between natural and chemical elements that alter and redraw shapes, break down and reconstruct planes.

In the Florence Art Week calendar, the exhibitions will be flanked by extraordinary temporary openings, which will give the public the opportunity to visit spaces such as the Ferragamo Historical Archive, which can be visited Sept. 30 and Oct. 7; or the monumental complex of Santa Croce, which thanks to the initiative Genius Loci: Discovering Santa Croce (organized by the Cultural Association Controradio Club, Opera di Santa Croce, Controradio in collaboration with La Nottola di Minerva) from Sept. 28 to 30 brings the public to discover its extraordinary cultural heritage through the languages of music of culture and art.

Florence Art Week also includes a schedule of performances, concerts, and theater pieces involving festivals and institutional and independent realities of the city. From Sept. 28 to 30 Many Possible Cities, the Manifattura Tabacchi Urban Regeneration Festival curated by LAMA Impresa Sociale, hosts A dimora, the story of the first artist residency in the Montagna Fiorentina, a journey to explore the potential of a typical context of an inland area such as the Valdisieve and in particular the municipality of Londa; on Sept. 30, Villa Galileo organizes an open studio at the end of the research residency in which artists Maëva Ferreira Da Costa and Tina Salvadori Paz present Cosmogonic Orchestra and An Entangled Time Machine, respectively, as part of their participation in the 10th edition of the biennial La Science de l’Art; on Oct. 5, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Cathy Berberian’s death, Frittelli arte contemporanea presents A Cathy. Theater for a Voice, a concert by the young singer Ljuba Bergamelli - curated by Tempo Reale - that pays tribute to the “cant’attrice”; finally, on Oct. 7, the Associazione Dimore Storiche Italiane is organizing the third edition of the ADSI Archives Day event Carte in dimora - Archivi.doc, which provides for the free opening of private archives or those that are difficult to access by the public for a total of about 40 places throughout Tuscany.

Fondazione Fabbrica Europa per le Arti Contemporanee as part of Festival Fabbrica Europa brings to the stage for Florence Art Week a number of authors who focus on the experimental mingling of languages: at Teatro Cantiere Florida on Sept. 29 we begin with the site-specific performance concert Coefore Rock&Roll, the second stage of the project ORESTEA. Trilogy of Vengeance, by choreographer Enzo Cosimi; while on Oct. 1, Compagnia Tardito/Rendina presents Sonja, a subjective journey on the eponymous character from Anton Čechov’s opera Uncle Vanya; on Oct. 5, composer Anne Paceo presents S.H.A.M.A.N.E.S, her creation, introspective yet universal, a timeless and profoundly human journey dedicated to animist practices widespread in so many cultures around the world since ancestral times; Oct. 6 is the turn of Dhafer Youssef & Eivind Aarset Live, a concert by Dhafer Youssef, the most creative oud player, capable of transcending genres between jazz, electronica and world fusion; on Oct. 7 and 8, Sofia Nappi/Komoco brings to the stage IMA - from the term that in Japanese means “the present moment” and in Aramaic and Hebrew has the meaning of “mother” in its meaning of rebirth and renewal - a quintet imagined by the choreographer during the period of social distancing, when she and her performers found themselves alone in their true home, the body.

Also as part of the same Festival, Alexandre Fandard’s Comme un symbole, an intense (self)portrait that lays bare the complexities and contradictions of a controversial figure, the banlieusard, and Leïla Ka’s Se faire la belle, in which the protagonist is a woman in a nightgown who, like a caged lion, struggles with an indomitable desire for freedom, will be staged at the Palazzina Reale on October 4.

Adding to the program of events that will be inaugurated during Florence Art Week are the exhibitions already in progress, such as Lisetta Carmi. Playing Loud (until Oct. 8 at Villa Bardini), curated by Giovanni Battista Martini, the first event in Florence of the Gallerie d’Italia-Turin’s La Grande Fotografia Italiana project; Steve McCurry. Children, the famous American photographer’s first exhibition entirely dedicated to childhood, running at the Museo degli Innocenti also through Oct. 8, produced by In Your Event By Cristoforo, in collaboration with Civita Mostre e Musei; Nico Vascellari’s Melma curated by Sergio Risaliti, which until Oct. 8 occupies the spaces of Forte Belvedere; Galleria Secci is present with a solo exhibition by German artist Erik Schmidt, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto, running until Nov. 4; at Veda continues until Nov. 11 Self Titled, a solo exhibition by U.S. artist Damon Zucconi; until Nov. 17 the exhibition Reality and Dream is running at Tornabuoni Arte. From Fattori to Guttuso, a never-before-seen reinterpretation of the works of the celebrated figurative masters of the early 20th century who developed their artistic visions within the postwar pictorial tradition; the doors of Villa Romana remain open until Nov. 19 with Open Studios 2023 A House for Mending, Troubling, Repairing, with the exhibition a house is a home, curated by Elena Agudio and Mistura Allison, and with a special extra moenia project by theNigerian artist Emeka Ogboh’s This Too Shall Pass - Tutto Passa, a sound installation that transforms the entire Piazzale degli Uffizi area into an immersive soundscape; young artist Glenda Costa’s Sicilian Liturgies remain on display at Crumb Gallery through Nov. 26; and Wang Guangyi ’s exhibition Obscured Existence - promoted by the Uffizi Galleries and curated by Eike Schmidt and Demetrio Paparoni.

The Florence Art Week initiative is joined by the original core of promoters, consisting of Museo Novecento and Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and Istituto degli Innocenti, and museums, foundations, galleries, associations, nonprofit spaces, production and research centers, educational and higher education institutions, such as Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze; ADSI - Associazione Dimore Storiche Italiane; Archivio Ferragamo and Salvatore Ferragamo S.P.A.; Associazione Culturale Controradio Club, Opera di Santa Croce, Controradio in collaboration with La Nottola di Minerva; Associazione Rifugio Digitale; Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza Virgilio Sieni; Collezione Roberto Casamonti; Crumb Gallery; Fondazione CR Firenze, Parchi Monumentali Bardini e Peyron, Intesa Sanpaolo and Gallerie D’Italia Torino; Fondazione Fabbrica Europa per le Arti Contemporanee; Frittelli Arte Contemporanea; Galleria Il Ponte; Galleria Poggiali; Galleria Secci; Hotel MH Florence; In Your Event by Cristoforo in collaboration with Civita Mostre e Musei; La Portineria - Progetti Arte Contemporanea; Lama Società Cooperativa - Impresa Sociale; MAD Murate Art District; Museo Marino Marini in collaboration with Firenze Città Nascosta Cultural Association; Sistema Museale di Ateneo - University of Florence and Galileo Galilei Institute for Theorethical Physics; Toast Project Space; Tornabuoni Arte; Veda; Villa Romana Florenz.

Image: Anish Kapoor, Svayambhu, 2007. Photo: Dave Morgan. © Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2023

Florence Art Week kicks off. Here's what the third edition of the event dedicated to contemporary art has to offer

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