Ferrara, Spazio Antonioni, the new museum dedicated to the Ferrara director, will open by summer

Spazio Antonioni, the new museum dedicated to Ferrara-based film director Michelangelo Antonioni, will open in Ferrara by summer 2024. Spazio Antonioni will be born with the intention of telling the general public and fans about his creative universe. It will be a living museum where to explore the precious testimonies of his work preserved in theAntonioni Archive in Ferrara and discover the multiple connections with the work of artists, directors, and intellectuals who inspired him or who continue to draw inspiration from the master.

The museological project, curated by Dominique Païni, former director of the Cinémathèque Française and of the cultural department of the Centre Pompidou, was developed, based on an idea of Vittorio Sgarbi and in synergy with his widow Enrica Fico Antonioni, by the Art Museums Service of the Municipality of Ferrara and the Ferrara Arte Foundation. “Spazio Antonioni,” as the curator states, “presents the filmmaker’s global oeuvre according to a rhythmic path to accompany the visitor’s discoveries and offer future generations a simple and synthetic access to this major work of modern art.” “This is the idea of the Spazio Antonioni, to create a fulcrum of attraction to bliss, nourish and commit ourselves to pay homage to the beauty the knowledge and inspiration that great Art gives us,” stresses Enrica Fico.

“With the Spazio Antonioni we wanted to create a place that makes available to the community a selection of materials from the director’s precious fund, consisting of more than 47,000 documents, films and other objects that characterized his existence, acquired by the City in the mid-1990s and long hidden in the archives. The desire, which was then the original one conceived with Antonioni himself and Enrica Fico, is to make it the heritage of all. This is why Spazio Antonioni must be a living and experienced place, a return ’home’ for the director and an international reference point for scholars, enthusiasts and anyone who wants to know more about this important figure in cinema, who has always had a special bond with Ferrara,” explains Ferrara Mayor Alan Fabbri, thanking all those who worked on the project. “A special thanks goes to the committee of honor with internationally renowned directors, actors and intellectuals united in the sign of Antonioni in Ferrara,” he added.

“Spazio Antonioni is a permanent museum that celebrates the great director from Ferrara and his inexhaustible influence, still today, in multiple fields, not only in cinema, but in art in a broad sense. Photography, music, literature: each of Antonioni’s films contains a kaleidoscope of worlds and stories that have entered the collective imagination. Dedicated to the master of modern cinema who won an Oscar for his career, it will be an active museum where the great filmmaker’s precious working materials will dialogue with testimonies from artists, filmmakers, and intellectuals from all over the world who inspired Michelangelo Antonioni’s cinema or who continue to draw nourishment from it,” added Culture Councillor Marco Gulinelli.

“Ferrara is the city that determines a poetic condition that we find in the works of de Chirico, in the cities of silence of d’Annunzio, in the settings of Antonioni,” said Vittorio Sgarbi. “Silence, fog, silent meditation are characterizing elements: that is why it is important that the Space is in Ferrara, like any other reality similar to those who were born there. The choice of the Pavilion of Contemporary Art is consistent with the history of this place, which has made the city, for decades and thanks to Franco Farina’s initiative, the first Italian capital of contemporary art.”

The two completely redesigned floors of theformer Contemporary Art Pavilion in Palazzo Massari will house a selection of the collection of objects and documents that the City of Ferrara acquired directly from Antonioni and Enrica Fico. This archive, consisting of more than 47 thousand items, has been the subject of an ambitious research and cataloguing project in collaboration with the University of Ferrara, eCampus University and the Emilia-Romagna Region and can be consulted on the www.archivioantonioni.it platform. It is the unique testimony of the director’s aesthetic and intellectual horizon, which gives the possibility to delve into his cinema and, more generally, into all his activity, including his critical, literary and artistic activity: films, posters, original screenplays, set photographs, drawings and paintings by Antonioni, his library and private discotheque, awards and the epistolary he entertained with the major protagonists of the cultural life of the last century. This precious heritage will also be enriched by sequences from Antonioni’s films and comparisons with visual works that inspired him, starting with the work of Italian masters such as Morandi, Filippo de Pisis or Alberto Burri.

The narrative unfolds chronologically by exploring the seasons of Antonioni’s cinema throughout the second half of the 20th century, from the decline of neorealism to the so-called “trilogy of modernity,” from the Anglo-American films witnessing the explosion of pop and hippy culture to the return to the origins and artistic tradition of Italy and Ferrara.

The intent is to create a space of living memory, education, and discovery, capable of continuous renewal, generating countless attractive opportunities. The innovative project, signed by the Rome-based international studio Alvisi Kirimoto, in coordination with the executive design and construction management by architect Rossella Bizzi of the Monumental Heritage Service of the Municipality of Ferrara, envisions a clear, fluid and dynamic exhibition itinerary reminiscent of one of Antonioni’s sequence plans.

On the ground floor, the rhythm is marked by five monolithic exhibition baffles that, together with the two immersive rooms dedicated to screenings of Antonioni’s films, will narrate the various sections. The progression of the experience will correspond to the gray-scale chromatic climax of the septa, which, in addition to shaping an abstract space, will recall the atmospheres meticulously researched by the director in his films.

On the second floor, panels that translate and rotate will allow the large, open and versatile hall to be modulated according to different needs, becoming a unique space for screenings or lectures, classrooms for workshops and laboratories or exhibitions. “We had the opportunity to collaborate directly with Michelangelo Antonioni in 2006, for the staging of his paintings in the exhibition Il silenzio a colori at the Temple of Hadrian in Rome. For the master, the way he attached the painting was as important as the painting itself, and this devotion to the particular as well as the whole, to what is in front of and behind the camera, is what we wanted to translate into architecture,” explained architect Massimo Alvisi.

A prestigious committee of honor was formed to support the project, and Gian Luca Farinelli, Thierry Frémaux, Wim Wenders, Alfonso Cuarón, Jonas Carpignano, Walter Salles, Irène Jacob, Sophie Marceau, Giorgio Tinazzi, as well as Enrica Fico, Dominique Païni, and Vittorio Sgarbi have joined.

Ferrara, Spazio Antonioni, the new museum dedicated to the Ferrara director, will open by summer

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.