All Uffizi exhibitions in 2019. From Kiki Smith to Pietro Aretino, and a surprise exhibition

There will also be a surprise exhibition in the Uffizi Galleries ’ 2019 exhibition program. It will be held at the Museum of Fashion and Costume in Palazzo Pitti on the occasion of Pitti Uomo and will run from June 11 to September 29, 2019: title, subject, and curatorship remain secret at the moment and will be announced at a press conference in spring 2019. Otherwise, a program that, as in the last year, will assemble ancient art exhibitions and contemporary art exhibitions, monographic exhibitions and thematic exhibitions, which will be housed in the complex’s institutions: the Uffizi Gallery, the museums of Palazzo Pitti, and the Boboli Gardens. The Uffizi’s 2019 aims to open the museums to the city and the world: the five-hundredth anniversary of Cosimo I’s birth in 1519 celebrates the figure of the first Grand Duke (the one who had the Uffizi built) with a “triptych” of exhibitions (on the Lanzichenecchi; on tapestries with stories of the Grand Duke’s government; on the first sculpture he commissioned for the Boboli Gardens, which has just been restored). Staying in the 16th century, the year will close with an exhibition devoted to the figure of a great intellectual and intriguer of the 16th century, Pietro Aretino, author of the ’Licentious Sonnets. March will celebrate women (peasants, factory workers, entrepreneurs, artists, writers and more), recounted in the exhibition Feminine Lexicon through works that reveal their role in society, from the 19th to the 20th century; and at the same time the solo exhibition of Kiki Smith, a leading figure in feminist art and culture today. There will be no shortage of focus on sculpture: ranging from the great late baroque season of bronze sculpture, to that of the major contemporary names in the international field, Tony Cragg at Boboli and Anthony Gormley at the Uffizi, with many works previously unseen or created for the occasion.

It begins Jan. 8 with Animalia Fashion, a foray into the relationship between fashion of the last decade and animals, a theme that is at once entertaining but also engaged, at a time when climate change and a waning interest of the superpowers in environmental issues are putting many species at risk. With the 2019 carnival, the exhibition on Baroque feasts and carnivals will open, an opportunity to admire, in context, Johann Paul Schor ’s large painting(a very recent Uffizi acquisition) depicting the feast organized by Prince Borghese in Rome in 1664. Jewish textiles sacred and profane, ancient and modern, understood not only as fashion and design but as a vehicle of culture as well as beauty, will be the subject in June of a major exhibition under the vaults of the Magliabechian Hall. And also in the summer, in the splendid Limonaia of the Boboli Gardens, an exhibition on the Trajan Column will open: archaeology and engineering will shake hands to illustrate one of the great monuments of antiquity. Boboli, the city’s great green lung, will welcome in its coolness all those who want to relax but also learn. And in August an exhibition with the evocative title, I cieli in una stanza, on the wooden ceilings of the Renaissance, will recall one year after the collapse of that of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami in Rome, combining scientific investigation with attention to the most burning problems of protection.

Art interprets history, the environment, but it also urges our awareness of and commitment to current events: it is with this in mind that the Uffizi has intended their exhibition plan for 2019. Since Grand Duke Cosimo was born in 1519, and his personal militia, the Lanzichenecchi, gave its name to one of Florence’s most important monuments (the Loggia dei Lanzi), it seemed only right to the Galleries to reflect on the role that the sovereign and his soldiers played in the culture and memory of Florentines. And including in the review some of today’s leading artists, Kiki Smith, Anthony Gormley and Tony Cragg, is, according to the Uffizi, a way to provide an opportunity to refresh the somewhat oleographic, crystallized image of the “cradle of the Renaissance” for which Florence is known worldwide. “It is our duty to celebrate the city’s historical and artistic roots, to highlight its treasures,” comments Uffizi Director Eike Schmid, “but we must not cling to thenineteenth-century idea of the Renaissance, forgetting that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries art was revolutionary and also ’young,’ that Masaccio painted the Brancacci Chapel when he was 25, Raphael arrived in Florence when he was 21, and Michelangelo finished sculpting the David when he was not yet 30. All Renaissance artists were experimental, but they were inspired by the ancient and respected it. On closer inspection, the same is true of those living today, and not only in terms of the exquisitely stylistic aspects, but also in terms of the boldness of their technical experimentation.This is why the exhibition on Trajan’s Column, opening in June in the Boboli Gardens Lemon House, will be a learning as well as celebratory occasion. Tradition and innovation must go hand in hand, we need to be open to the new, and the program that the Uffizi proposes for the coming year is aimed at everyone: from the child to the scientist to the art historian with the most sophisticated palate.”

Below is the full program of 2019 exhibitions at the Uffizi.

Animalia Fashion
curated by Patricia Lurati
Pitti Palace, Museum of Fashion and Costume
Jan. 8-May 5, 2019

Fashion (and not just Art) as the “monkey of Nature.” Fashion as a fabulous theater and discovery of the wonders of the animal world, which for designers becomes a source of inspiration, or which creates unexpected juxtapositions in the imagination of the observer. Fashion, therefore, also understood as an artistic expression of our wonder at the beauty of the universe.

In the exhibition, conceived as a fantastic, hyperbolic museum of natural history, clothes, accessories and jewelry become an experience, a journey through the history of zoological science, but above all a discovery of shapes and colors that from time to time evoke insects, fish, birds, shells, common and rare animals. The contemporary style - examples from 2000 to 2018 are displayed - expresses its extraordinary creative power thanks also to unexpected pairings, in the Museum’s rooms, with real stuffed animals, with butterflies and other insects kept in display cases, but also with drawings from ancient bestiaries and pages from medieval tacuina sanitatis .

Kiki Smith . What I saw on the road
curated by Eike Schmidt and Renata Pintus
Pitti Palace, Gallery of Modern Art, Andito degli Angiolini
February 14-June 2, 2019

What ISaw on the road is the solo exhibition that the Uffizi Galleries dedicate to Kiki Smith (Nuremberg, 1954), one of the protagonists of contemporary art, a militant feminist, present with her work in the most prestigious international institutions (from the MoMA in New York to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, from the Haus Esters Museum in Krefeld to the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona) and winner by acclamation of the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 with the installation Homespun Tales.

Kiki Smith combines traditional techniques (casting, terracotta, tapestry, etching) with the most sophisticated digital technology, and her themes draw on the visual sources of the Christian Middle Ages, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century proto-science, and certain surrealism, with results still capable of representing the obsessions, lacerations, and contradictions of humanity today.

A central and almost exclusive theme of his discourse has been until throughout the 1990s corporeality, and in particular the female body in all its fragility but also heroically capable of redemption and rebellion. More recently, the artist’s reflection has expanded to consider the entire relationship between man, nature and the cosmos: the resulting images have taken on the tones of a pacifying grace that can be a solution, an antidote in times of hatred and brutality. All of this can be felt in the almost animistic afflatus of some of the 12 jaquard tapestries in the exhibition, which - in the six rooms of the exhibition itinerary - will also be joined by a selection of sculptures.

Johann Paul Schor’s Golden Chariot.
The Ephemeral Splendor of Baroque Carnivals
curated by Alessandra Griffo and Maria Matilde Simari
Pitti Palace, Palatine Gallery, Sala delle Nicchie
February 20-May 5, 2019

In the Baroque age, celebration was fantasy and magnificence: huge triumphal floats, masks and allegories, dazzling sets, and surprises to no end. All this is encountered in the exhibition, which has as its focal point the image of Prince Giovanni Battista Borghese’s lavish masquerade for the Roman carnival of 1664. The fabulous event was immortalized by Giovanni Paolo Schor, a collaborator of Pietro da Cortona and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in a large painting purchased in 2017 by the Uffizi Galleries for the future Carriage Museum in the Pitti Palace. The work will be exhibited alongside Filippo Gagliardi and Filippo Lauri’s spectacular Giostra dei Caroselli, exceptionally loaned by the Museo di Roma at Palazzo Braschi. In an evocative night setting, by the light of hundreds of torches, the fabulous event staged in honor of Queen Christina of Sweden’s triumphal entry into the Urbe was animated by triumphal floats and masked characters, with plumes like colorful explosions. The exhibition will also feature drawings, objects, and engravings (including a selection of Jacques Callot’s Dances of Sfessania ), to relive the magic, dazzling ephemera, exaggerations, and costumes of carnivals and festivals in the seventeenth century.

Antony Gormley. Being
Curated by Eike Schmidt and Max Seidel
The Uffizi, Magliabechiana Hall.
February 26-May 26, 2019

The new, expansive Magliabechiana exhibition hall will bring together twelve works by Antony Gormley, made in different materials and sizes, that explore the body in space and the body as space. Two other sculptures will be placed in the rooms of the historical collection, while a third will be installed on the Uffizi terrace above the Loggia dei Lanzi. Many of these works were made for the occasion, and are the result of a long creative process: among them Veer II (2018), a life-size three-dimensional cast-iron evocation of a nervous system at the center of the body, and Breathe (2018), a large-scale expansive work covered in lead, which applies the cosmic principles of the Big Bang to the singularity of a subjective body.

Finally, a further relationship with the Uffizi’s historical collection was sought through a room dedicated to the dialogue between the Sleeping Hermaphrodite, a Roman copy of the imperial age from a Hellenistic original from the second century B.C. resting on a plinth, and the block Settlement (2005), which instead embraces the floor.

Women’s Lexicon.
Women between commitment and talent 1861-1926
Curated by Simonella Condemi
Pitti Palace, Gallery of Modern Art, Sala del Fiorino
March 7 - May 26, 2019

The time frame considered for the exhibition begins with National Unity, which coincides with the enrollment of some women workers in the Fratellanza Artigiana (1861), and ends with 1926, when the Nobel Prize was awarded to Grazia Deledda: the first Italian woman to receive the honor, the writer became a symbol and a ransom for her fellow countrywomen. The works on display document the variety of talents that have made women interpreters of history and knowledge, in different fields ranging from the humblest of field work to the artistic-craft, literary or scientific. What emerges is an interesting, evocative and still little known kaleidoscope that seeks to delineate the ’importance of women’s commitment in the various spheres of work, where the inclusion of women will be increasingly incisive thanks to the passion of the protagonists, who while not giving up their family role find a personal space to fulfill themselves. An artistic discourse, therefore, but also one of historical reflection, which will be complemented by an in-depth itinerary in the itinerary of the Gallery of Modern Art. In the rooms, in fact, works related to this theme will be highlighted with certain focuses or marked so as to be identified by the visitor.

Tony Cragg
curated by Eike Schmidt and Jon Wood
Boboli Gardens
May 7-October 13, 2019

The series of exhibitions of contemporary sculpture at the Boboli Gardens continues, this time with one of the top names in the international field, Tony Cragg (Liverpool, 1949). The core of his work is inspired by the generative phenomena of matter, with results of an almost late Baroque virtuosity, with a strong tactile component. The artist emerges as one of the figures most open to experimentation with the technical and formal possibilities of the plastic arts. Since 1977 he has lived and worked in Germany, in Wuppertal, where he also founded the Waldfrieden Sculpture Park, a renowned center for contemporary sculpture in dialogue with nature. The Boboli Garden thus becomes a key stage in this creative endeavor that investigates the relationship of the artwork to public space, a theme that has catalyzed the artist’s attention in recent years (five of his monumental sculptures are installed along New York’s Park Avenue as part of the NYC Parks Art in the Parks Program ). And with the Garden, the landscape and the natural element:

In fact, while elements of Minimalism, memories of Futurist dynamism, and the aesthetics of the machine are some of the artist’s most obvious references, the result is intensely organic, a hymn to matter-Nature and its inexhaustible life force.

Homage to Cosimo I

To celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of the birth of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Florence, a triptych of initiatives has been devised in symbolic locations of the Uffizi Galleries.

Homage to Cosimo I
The Hundred Lanzi of thePrince
Curated by Maurizio Arfaioli, Alessio Assonitis, Pasquale Focarile
The Uffizi, Sale di Levante
June 6-September 29

The historic Medici guard, the Lanzi, are the subject of the exhibition that the Uffizi is organizing in collaboration with the Medici Archive Project. It is a reconstruction of the centuries-long history of this militia, in an exhibition itinerary that starts from its origins, with Cosimo I, and goes up to the extinction of the Medici in the 18th century. An exhibition of paintings, engravings, drawings, weapons, armor, even sounds will tell the story of the Lanzi from various aspects-social, cultural, military-and their impact on city life. The main task of the guard was to defend the person of the sovereign and his closest associates, so the figures of the Lanzi are unfailing presences in depictions of events related to the sovereign, and indeed signal the presence of the court in figurative space through their iconic weapon: the halberd. Thanks to the abundance of works and figurative documents available, the exhibition recounts and re-enacts the life of a soldierly corps that even affected the naming of one of Florence’s most important monuments, La Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza Signoria.

Homage to Cosimo I
A woven biography.
The tapestries in honor of Cosimo I
Curated by Alessandra Griffo and Lucia Meoni
Pitti Palace, Sala Bianca and Sala delle Nicchie
June 6 - September 29, 2019

The highlights of the government of the first Medici Grand Duke are recounted in the series of eight tapestries, produced in two series in the Medici tapestry workshop under the direction of Pietro Févère, chief tapestry maker of the grand ducal manufactory. The Stories of Cosimo I begin with his rise to power in 1537, and continue with the renovation of Pisa; the conquest of Siena; the enlargement of the Palazzo Vecchio and the construction of the Uffizi; the journey to Rome in October 1560 to also negotiate with Pope Pius IV about the title of grand duke, which he would receive in 1569; the founding of theOrder of the Knights of St. Stephen; the aid in money brought to the King of France Charles IX, son of Catherine de’ Medici, to fight the heretics ; the conferring of the crown of Tuscany on Joan of Austria when she became the bride of Cosimo I’s heir, the future Grand Duke Francis I, reinforcing the political alliance between the Medici and the Habsburgs. The choice of the episodes is probably due to the scholar Francesco Rondinelli, who was also the author of the iconographic program for Pietro da Cortona and Ciro Ferri’s decorations in the Rooms of the Planets on the piano nobile of the Pitti Palace. The series of tapestries, a veritable “woven biography,” was intended for the Hall of Saturn, the heart of the sovereign’s power, consecrated to the Secret Hearings of Grand Duke Ferdinand II, who with this commission legitimized and ennobled his own government, paying homage to his predecessor.

Homage to Cosimo I
The villan and his botticella.
Amusements in the new garden
curated by Alessandra Griffo
Pitti Palace, Sala delle Nicchie
June 6-September 29, 2019

Purchased by Cosimo’s consort, Eleonora di Toledo, in 1550, Palazzo Pitti over time became the new residence of the grand dukes, immediately endowed with a large garden, which soon imposed itself as a model to be imitated by palaces throughout Europe. Probably the first sculpture made for Boboli was the Villano with the Botticella, sculpted by 1557 by Giovanni di Paolo Fancelli to a design by master Baccio Bandinelli, and the progenitor of a successful tradition of statues of popular subjects that still enliven the outdoor paths in the green. The recently completed restoration is intended to pay tribute to the ducal couple and offer a cue for a visit to these Cosmian places.

SURPRISE EXHIBITION ON THE OCCASION OF PITTI UOMO
TITLE, SUBJECT AND CURATORSHIP WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT A DEDICATED PRESS CONFERENCE IN P SPRING 2019
Pitti Palace, Museum of Fashion and Costume
June 11-September 29, 2019

Building a masterpiece: the Trajan Column
curated by Giovanni De Pasquale and Fabrizio Paolucci
Boboli Gardens, Limonaia
June 18-October 6, 2019

Conceived to celebrate Emperor Trajan’s military victories in Dacia, the Column is also a monument to the technological and construction wisdom of the Roman world. The exhibition will allow visitors to retrace the journey of the colossal marble blocks that make up the work: from the quarries of Luni, at 800 meters above sea level, they were transported to the Portus Romae by traveling 200 nautical miles, and then to the capital by ascending the Tiber. The erection of the monument had to contend with considerable weights: from 20-30 tons for each of the seventeen rocks, to about 40 or so for the summit capital. The Column was inaugurated on May 12, 113 AD inside the Forum of Trajan, and the great fortune it enjoyed inspired artists and architects until the 19th century. The exhibition will feature dozens of works from Italy’s leading archaeological museums, as well as specially made scale and life-size models illustrating the complex procedures of transporting the blocks and the different stages of the column’s construction site.

All the colors of Jewish Italy
Precious fabrics and textiles from ancient Jerusalem to modern ready-to-wear
Curated by Dora Liscia Bemporad and Olga Melasecchi
The Uffizi, Magliabechiana Hall
June 27-October 27, 2019

The exhibition is divided into several chapters that address various aspects of the relationship between the Jewish world and textiles, both for religious and secular use up to twentieth-century fashion and entrepreneurship. The concept that guides it has a vast social and cultural scope, in which art and history are symbolically and concretely woven into the textures of the artifacts. This triumph of textiles will be displayed in an eight-section itinerary, starting from the time of the high priest Aaron, and going all the way up to twentieth-century fashion and modern textile entrepreneurship, passing through such themes as the role of writing as a decorative motif, the use of textiles for synagogue decorations, embroidery as secret work, and the role of women. And then textiles as a form of social affirmation of the wealthier strata of Jewish communities, who did not hesitate to affix coats of arms in the furnishings for synagogues, trade and family ties with Mediterranean countries, and the consequent contaminations in the style of artifacts. Also of great interest is the section devoted to the emancipation of Jews in the nineteenth century, and their role as both artists and exalted collectors of textiles, ultimately responsible for the flourishing of studies in that hitherto neglected field.

The Skies in a Room.
Wooden ceilings in Florence and Rome in the Renaissance
Curated by Claudia Conforti, Maria Grazia D’Amelio, Francesca Funis, Lorenzo Grieco
The Uffizi, Sala Detti and Sala del Camino
Aug. 30-Dec. 1, 2019

The exhibition illustrates wooden coffered ceilings, called “cieli” in the Renaissance. Constructive and ornamental elements of interior space, the ceilings are a compendium of technique, art and symbolic representation, updating ancient culture in the refounding that affected churches and palaces in Florence and Rome between the 15th and 16th centuries. Drawings largely from the Uffizi collection will be on display, illustrating ancient prototypes, from the Domus Aurea to the Temple of Bacchus in Rome; designs by Sangallo, Vasari and workshop, Michelangelo, Zucchi, Maderno and others; the monumental load-bearing trusses. Paintings, engravings, models and authentic Renaissance lacunars will enrich the exhibition. Interactive devices will show wooden ceilings from Rome and Florence, chosen from among the most beautiful and important.

Shaped by Fire.
Bronze Sculpture in the Florence of the Last Medici
Curated by Eike D. Schmidt, Sandro Bellesi and Riccardo Gennaioli
Pitti Palace, Treasury of the Grand Dukes
September 18, 2019 - January 12, 2020

Through a focused selection of works, the exhibition aims to offer a comprehensive picture of the art of bronze sculpture in the Tuscan capital, especially at the time of the last grand dukes of the house of Medici. Beginning with a selection of significant works by Giambologna, his school and the most important masters in early 17th-century metalwork, the choice of works focuses on commissions that arose, essentially, at the direct instigation of the Florentine court or in any case linked to it. Particular emphasis will be given to the figures of Giovan Battista Foggini and Massimiliano Soldani Benzi, protagonists of a profound renewal of Tuscan sculpture, which had become to all intents and purposes one of the most renowned European sculptural schools of the time. It was from them that the rebirth of bronze sculpture in Florence in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries would begin, to which the whole of Europe would look to, thanks to the resounding creations of Florentine craftsmen such as Giuseppe Piamontini, Giovacchino Fortini, Antonio Montauti, Agostino Cornacchini, Lorenzo Merlini, Girolamo Tacciati, Giovan Camillo Cateni and Pietro Cipriani.

Pietro Aretino and the Art of the Renaissance.
Curated by Anna Bisceglia, Matteo Ceriana and Paolo Procaccioli
The Uffizi, Aula Magliabechiana
November 26, 2019-March 3, 2020

One hundred paintings, sculptures, objects of applied art, tapestries, miniatures and printed books reconstruct the world of a great 16th-century intellectual, Pietro Aretino (1492-1556). His portrait in the Palatine Gallery is one of the masterpieces of Titian, known for effigies of popes and emperors, no less. Pietro Aretino lived through, and nurtured with his writings, a fundamental moment in Italian history and art: the one that saw the rise of Michelangelo and Raphael in Rome and the spread throughout Europe of the culture that had matured in the first three decades of the sixteenth century in the pageantry of the court of Julius II, Leo X and Clement VII. Aretino lived, in a word, at the height of the “Modern Manner,” as defined by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, published in 1550 and 1568. The exhibition is divided into five sections that illustrate the main moments of Pietro’s story, and the alternation of scenarios from his beginnings between Arezzo and Perugia, to his arrival at the papal court Rome, and his move to northern Italy, first to Mantua and finally to Venice.

Pictured: Cristiano Banti, Confidenze (Florence, Gallery of Modern Art, Palazzo Pitti). Work exhibited at the exhibition Lessico femminile

All Uffizi exhibitions in 2019. From Kiki Smith to Pietro Aretino, and a surprise exhibition

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.