A museum is born in Mantua that will house a collection of international significance: the Sonnabend Collection

Mantua is preparing to welcome a new contemporary art museum in the heart of the city. Starting in winter 2025 (so next), the renovated Palazzo della Ragione will become the permanent home of the Sonnabend Collection, one of the most important private collections of the 20th century. With a layout curated by Federico Fedel, the new exhibition space will present a unique itinerary through the most relevant art movements of the second half of the last century.

The Sonnabend Collection is the fruit of the vision of Ileana Sonnabend (1914-2007), an influential Romanian-born art dealer, her husband Michael Sonnabend (1900-2001) and their adopted son Antonio Homen. In the course of their business, through galleries in Paris and New York, the Sonnabends helped introduce American art to Europe and export European art overseas, playing a crucial role in the spread of the twentieth-century avant-garde.

The museum project is the result of a collaboration between the City of Mantua, the Sonnabend Collection Foundation and Marsilio Arte, which will take care of the overall management of the space, also handling communications, publishing projects and the bookshop. Just under a year of work is planned for the opening.

A journey through twentieth-century art

The exhibition will be divided into eleven rooms, tracing the most significant moments of the Sonnabend collection. Among the works on display are iconic masterpieces such as Jasper Johns’ Figure 8 (1958), Roy Lichtenstein’s Little Aloha (1962) and Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup (1962). The itinerary will continue with the protagonists of Pop Art, including Jim Dine, James Rosenquist and Tom Wesselmann, juxtaposed with Italian contemporaries such as Michelangelo Pistoletto and Mario Schifano.

There will be no shortage of the big names of Minimalism, represented by Donald Judd and Robert Morris, and the innovative works of Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra, who revolutionized the language of sculpture. Arte Povera, another focal point of the collection, will be celebrated through works by Giovanni Anselmo, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, and Gilberto Zorio, artists whom Ileana Sonnabend was among the first to exhibit in New York.

The exhibition will also testify to the gallery owner’s interest in photography and performance, with works by Bernd & Hilla Becher, Luigi Ontani, Vito Acconci, Gilbert & George, Candida Höfer and Matthias Schaller. The itinerary will culminate with German painting of the 1980s-represented by Jörg Immendorff, Anselm Kiefer and A.R. Penck - and with contemporary American art, including Jeff Koons and Haim Steinbach.

Ileana Sonnabend: a life for art

Ileana Schapira, born in Bucharest in 1914, was one of the most influential figures in the twentieth-century art world. After moving to New York during World War II to escape Nazi persecution, she married Leo Castelli, with whom she shared a passion for contemporary art. After her divorce, she joined Michael Sonnabend in 1960, with whom she opened Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris in 1962, devoting herself to promoting American and Italian artists.

In 1970 he opened a gallery in New York, which he moved to the SoHo neighborhood the following year and which became a landmark for the contemporary art scene. The gallery opened with a celebrated performance by Gilbert & George, "Underneath The Arches," which marked the beginning of a long tradition of performance events. These included Vito Acconci’s “Seedbed” (1972), a provocative installation-performance that challenged the boundaries between audience and artist.

An ideal link with Mantua

The choice of Mantua as the permanent home of the Sonnabend Collection is not accidental. The project aims to establish an ideal bridge between Ileana Sonnabend and another great figure of artistic patronage: Isabella d’Este, regent of the Marquisate of Mantua between the 15th and 16th centuries. Considered one of the greatest patrons of the arts, Isabella d’Este created an environment of extraordinary cultural vibrancy in Mantua, attracting artists and intellectuals from all over Europe.

Today, the Sonnabend Collection continues this tradition, restoring Mantua to a leading role in the international cultural scene. With its opening scheduled for winter 2025, the Sonnabend Collection museum is thus poised to become a must-see destination for art lovers, strengthening the dialogue between past and present in the heart of a city rich in history.

Statements

Mayor Mattia Palazzi states, “Mantua, the city of the Renaissance, will enter the international map of contemporary art. For Mantua it is a strategic investment, but it is a success for Italy, which will have in its first Italian capital of culture (2016) one of the world’s leading collections. I am grateful to the Sonnabend Collection Foundation and Antonio Homem for sharing such an ambitious project, born out of our dialogue in NY in the spring of 2022. It was a dream, then became a project and will soon be a reality. We will open the new Sonnabend Collection Museum, in the heart of the city, within a year.”

President and co-founder of the Sonnabend Collection Foundation Antonio Homem says, “Throughout my life and throughout my long and exceptional journey with Ileana and Michael, we have always shared with each other our passion, our enthusiasm, and our belief in art and in the commitment and foresight of artists. For this reason I am happy to be able to share this, as a great visual biography, in this magnificent city, which is itself a wonderful work of art.”

Artistic director Mario Codognato adds, “Michael and Ileana Sonnabend had a strong connection with Italy, of which they were great connoisseurs, with that original and unpredictable gaze that distinguished them. It is therefore particularly significant that the new home of their extraordinary collection is in our country, in Mantua. Michael knew and loved Dante like no other person I have met, and that their collection is housed in a 13th-century building is almost serendipitous. Ileana was extremely important to many Italian artists of the postwar generation and certainly helped to make her known and appreciated in the United States, so this tribute to her figure and work is an integral part of her story.”

“We are excited about this new and ambitious project, carried out with foresight by the City of Mantua, which will make it possible for the first time ever to exhibit the extraordinary Sonnabend collection in its entirety, within a historic and prestigious venue for the city. Mantua will become, in this perspective, an essential stop for anyone who wants to discover and admire the works of Pop Art and of the most influential international artists of the 20th century,” says Luca De Michelis, CEO of Marsilio Arte and Marsilio Editori.

A museum is born in Mantua that will house a collection of international significance: the Sonnabend Collection

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