An exhibition at the Pecci Center on the relationship between contemporary art and the urban environment through museum collections

In conjunction with the opening of the Urban Center within the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato, from November 20, 2021 to June 12, 2022, the museum presents the exhibition Art and the City, curated by Stefano Pezzato. The exhibition aims to place awide selection of works from the museum collections in dialogue with rare archival materials. Conceived as a direct expression of the city of Prato, but also as a reflection of a metropolitan context in constant renewal and extension, namely the area between Florence, Prato and Pistoia, the new exhibition presents an unexplored overview of the relationships between contemporary art and the urban environment.

The exhibition itinerary unfolds in three sections along the museum’s large wing: the city investigated and interpreted by various contemporary artists; art produced in recent decades that refers to or integrates with urban reality; and contemporary art in the fabric of Prato and in the very setting of the Pecci Center. Paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, videos, to which are added drawings, prints, and archival materials by about forty artists and groups, both Italian and international, collected in the collections and documented in various archives of the Pecci Center investigate current issues such as the transformations, transfigurations, and utopias of the city, the conflicts, rises, and falls that occur within it. Works that speak of encounters and confrontations, scenarios and subjects proper to the urban sphere, but also reveal artistic insertions conceived and realized for Prato. Some works expressly “made in Prato” open and close the exhibition, to reiterate the centrality and influence of contemporary artistic research within this city. The decision to exhibit only works from the collections and archival materials is intended to enhance the vast collected and ever-expanding patrimony, to emphasize the potential, flexibility and sustainability of projects made with materials acquired and preserved at the Pecci Center from 1988 to the present.

New educational and public programs, film reviews and in-depth meetings will be activated during the exhibition; connections with works and cultural initiatives in the city and connections with productive activities in the area will be stimulated.

The artists in the exhibition are Andrea Abati, Andreoni & Fortugno, Nobuyoshi Araki, Marco Bagnoli, Richard Baquié, Massimo Barzagli, Rossella Biscotti, Eberhard Bosslet, Botto & Bruno, Marcos Chaves, Marcelo Cidade, Marco Cingolani, William Eggleston, Anna Esposito, Jan Fabre (with Ilya Kabakov), Fisc hli & Weiss, Rainer Ganahl, Gilbert & George, Nan Goldin, Dmitri Gutov (for Radek Community), Haas & Hahn, Takashi Homma, Karen Kilimnik, Kinkaleri, Philip Lorca di Corcia, Lucia Marcucci, Mario Mariotti, Fausto Melotti, Nino Migliori, Domingo Milella, Ana toly Osmolovsky, Fabrizio Plessi, Anne & Patrick Poirier, Guido Sartorelli, Mauro Staccioli, Wolfgang Tillmans, Marco Tirelli, Leonid Tishkov, Rodolfo Vitone, Andy Warhol, Erwin Wurm.

Image: Marco Bagnoli, City of the Sun (skylight), 1988 (Centro Pecci and Prato City Council Collection). Ph.Credit Carlo Fei

An exhibition at the Pecci Center on the relationship between contemporary art and the urban environment through museum collections

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