Maria Luisa Pacelli appointed director of the Carrara Academy

As of December 2024, theCarrara Academy of Bergamo will have a new director: the museum will be led by Maria Luisa Pacelli, an experienced art historian, who was chosen by the Board of Directors of the Accademia Carrara Foundation to succeed Martina Bagnoli as director of the museum after she resigned. The appointment thus marks the beginning of a new chapter for an institution that has been able to consolidate its national and international prestige in recent years.

Maria Luisa Pacelli, a 1998 graduate of Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, has a 20-year career in the museum sector, including 14 years as director of institutions of public importance: in fact, she comes from her experience at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna , which she has led for the past four years. Her directorship has been characterized by a strategic vision capable of integrating conservation, education and innovation, with an approach that has garnered critical and public acclaim. Pacelli will bring with her to Bergamo a network of institutional relationships developed through collaborations with Italian, European and international entities, matured through shared projects and cultural exchanges. Her management style focuses on an organic system that combines protection and promotion, production of cultural content, cultural welfare and educational experiences.

One of the key elements of the transition will be to continue in the wake of the structural and strategic innovations introduced on the occasion of 2023, the year in which Bergamo was, together with Brescia, the Italian Capital of Culture. Among the most significant interventions is the refurbishment of the museum’s halls and the opening in 2024 of new spaces such as the Gardens and the cafeteria-restaurant, which have expanded the Carrara Academy’s cultural and recreational offerings.

Prior to directing the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, from 2010 to 2019 she served as director of the Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries of the City of Ferrara, comprising Museo Giovanni Boldini, Museo dell’Ottocento, Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Filippo de Pisis, Michelangelo Antonioni Archive, and the Centro Video Arte fund at Palazzo dei Diamanti. During the previous ten years she served as chief conservator of these museums. From 2011 to 2019, she was also scientific and organizational manager of the exhibition program that Fondazione Ferrara Arte carried out at Palazzo dei Diamanti (14 major exhibitions and more than 1 million visitors in 9 years) and other venues and of Ferrara Arte Editore. Previously, she was coordinator (2000-2006) and then co-director (2006-2010) of the same institutions. During the decade in which she held the dual role of director of the museums and head of programming for the Ferrara Arte Foundation, she developed a unified project for the two institutions, coordinating the work of numerous offices and developing projects in relation to other national and international museum venues. The activities promoted over more than two decades by Maria Luisa Pacelli have been distinguished by a high scientific quality and have been an opportunity to revitalize the study and enhancement of museum collections and, more generally, of the territory’s heritage.

Over the years it has woven relationships, consolidated to date, with the most important national and international cultural institutions both for exchange purposes and by curating exhibitions, projects and publications, among them National Gallery in London, Hermitage in St. Petersburg, China World Art Museum in Beijing, Prado Museum in Madrid, Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, Thyssen Bornemisza in Madrid, National Gallery in Edinburgh, Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. She has conceived, curated and promoted scholarly research, exhibitions and special projects devoted both to the heritages of the institutions with which she has collaborated and by applying her commitment to temporary projects. Given the wide-ranging nature of the museums, archives and funds in which he has worked, Pacelli has applied experience toward ancient, modern and contemporary art, with diverse and interesting intersections toward other disciplines - from literature to cinema - and cultures.

“A collection of extraordinary quality, a completely renovated museum, a structure and a management of great reputation and professionalism, against the backdrop of Bergamo, a dynamic and attentive city to Accademia Carrara, are the ideal conditions to put my experience in the field of cultural programming, national and international relations and the relationship with the territory and its communities,” says Maria Luisa Pacelli, director of Accademia Carrara. “I am honored and convinced that I can make a significant contribution to the further growth of this important institution.”

“The importance and centrality of the Accademia Carrara in the city and as an institution known nationally and internationally,” said Elena Carnevali, president of the Accademia Carrara Foundation and mayor of Bergamo, “has led us to a careful reflection with respect to its recent past and, above all, toward its future. In full respect with the history, the values of the founder and keeping well in mind the needs of a museum as extraordinary as it is dynamic, the Board of Directors appointed Maria Luisa Pacelli. I am and we are certain that her past experiences as director of important institutions as well as her skills, together with her established institutional relationships in Italy and around the world, will still bring value to Accademia Carrara and its growth.”

“The Municipal Administration,” says Sergio Gandi, councilor for culture and deputy mayor of Bergamo, “is satisfied with the speed with which the CDA of Fondazione Accademia Carrara has come to indicate the new director, with the aim of handing over the museum, for the coming years, to a safe and authoritative guide. Maria Luisa Pacelli presents an outstanding curriculum, with a long management experience in Italian museums, where she has directed all the related activities in terms of organization and curatorship of exhibitions, showing solidity and capacity for renewal. We are confident that hers will be a cultural and scientific programming that is up to Carrara’s history and the instances of development desirable in its future, to which the Municipality will give full support in the pursuit of its objectives. Our thanks go to Martina Bagnoli, for the commitment and passion expressed during her direction, and to Paolo Plebani, for the great professional contribution and availability that, even in this circumstance, he has shown toward the museum institution.”

Maria Luisa Pacelli appointed director of the Carrara Academy

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