Florence, future St. Ursula Museum opens to public in former convent closed for 40 years

Theformer monastery of St. Ursula in Florence, which has been closed for nearly four decades, will reopen to the public for a month, from June 1 to July 2, 2023 on the occasion of the exhibition Beyond the Walls of St. Ursula. With this exhibition event, Storia, a subsidiary of Artea, the French company chosen in 2020 by the Metropolitan City of Florence to redevelop the complex, thus begins the operation of returning a space rich in history to the city. Upon completion of the major redevelopment plan, Sant’Orsola will house an art and design school, restaurants and cafes, artisans’ workshops and artists’ ateliers, a guesthouse, coworking spaces and a museum, managed by a nonprofit foundation that will soon be created by Artea, with the dual purpose of preserving the memory of this unique place and promoting contemporary artistic creation by inviting established and emerging artists to dialogue with the traces of its past.

During the month it is open to the public, the ephemeral, transient museum, which is destined to transform, will have free admission and guided tours. The exhibition, sponsored by the Metropolitan City of Florence, is curated by Morgane Lucquet Laforgue, head of the future Museo Sant’Orsola, which is scheduled to officially open in 2025. Beyond the Walls of Sant’ Orsola marks the beginning of a series of encounters with the public, discovering a space in constant evolution. An ephemeral museum, destined to last only a month and then change again, but capable of allowing visitors access to Sant’Orsola before the official opening of the museum itself and the entire complex, making them witnesses and participants in the ongoing redevelopment process, beyond those walls that have been inaccessible for decades.

The exhibition takes place in the recently restored spaces, namely the two inner churches, the apothecary’s shop and the cloister, and presents the results of the research of two different contemporary artists: Sophia Kisielewska-Dunbar, a Londoner born in 1990 and the first artist in the St. Ursula Museum’s residency program, and Alberto Ruce, a Sicilian-born urban artist living in Marseille. Both have created original works of art, inspired by the history of the place and elements of its past, seeking a dialogue with the present.

In particular, Ruce approached a number of women in the neighborhood to pose as models, reiterating the urgency of going “beyond the walls” of St. Ursula so that the community can once again experience its spaces. With this participatory perspective in mind, the future museum sought active collaboration from the outset with local authorities and Florentine associations, as well as with schools, academies and educational institutions in the area. The exhibition will display the results of the workshops carried out, as part of the preparation of the exhibition, with the students of the Master of Design of the Italian Academy of Florence and of Communication of the IED - European Institute of Design. A reconstitution of the glazed terracotta lunette that once stood above the entrance door to the convent and was replicated by three professors from the Liceo Artistico Statale di Porta Romana high school will also be on preview.

Pictured is the cloister of the former St. Ursula monastery.

Florence, future St. Ursula Museum opens to public in former convent closed for 40 years

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