Venaria Reale offers a rich game-themed schedule. The scheduled exhibitions and events

Venaria Reale is dedicating all of 2022 to the theme of play with an articulated program of exhibitions, events, performances, meetings and conversations entitled PLAY. A Year to Play.

It was chosen to focus on play because the Royal Palaces and Residences have always been places of leisure and pleasure and furthermore it seemed meaningful to reflect on this theme especially at a time when the pandemic forced a profound redefinition of playful activity, a fundamental expression of human sociality. For this reason, this year Venaria Reale proposes a journey into the world of play: a palimpsest of exhibitions and cultural activities involving both the courtly spaces of the Reggia and the vast gardens, extending also to the City of Venaria Reale, which, with its Borgo Antico, constitutes a historical-architectural unicum with the Reggia itself, the nearby Mandria Park and the Castle of the same name, which can also be visited. Lectures, conversations, events and performances will accompany the exhibitions through the winter of 2022-2023, then give way to the theme of conviviality, which will be focused on in 2023-2024.

Returning to the theme of play, two exhibitions in continuity with each other are underway from April 9 until September 18, 2022 at the Halls of Arts: From Squares to Courts, Stories of Games and Performances between the 1700s and 1800s and Photos in Play! A Tale of 18 Italian Photographers.

The former is curated by Silvia Ghisotti and Andrea Merlotti, with direction and narration by Arturo Brachetti and staging by Peter Bottazzi. The exhibition features some representations of games and performances of Courts, theaters and squares from Turin’s Savoy capital to provincial towns through rare iconographic evidence from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including paintings from the Royal Residences of Savoy and posters from the Incisa Fund of the Bishop’s Seminary Library in Asti. During the eighteenth century, squares and Courts hosted games and shows: the Court often brought festivals and tournaments to the squares, which the citizenry could attend and participate in. However, in their daily routine, the squares were enlivened by jugglers, acrobats, magicians, puppeteers, animal trainers, and those who displayed unusual objects such as magic lanterns, wax statues, and the first balloons. It also happened to witness in Turin’s Piazza Castello the performance of actors and singers, jugglers and tightrope walkers, as well as storytellers who acted, however, in the Palazzo Madama in front of it. Through written sources it is possible to reconstruct the tours of wandering artists who went all over Europe. The exhibition aims to tell the story of this world of entertainment through precious works preserved in the Royal Residences of the House of Savoy and in public and private collections in the Piedmont region. Alongside paintings, from Palazzo Madama and the Castles of Racconigi and Agliè, rare posters preserved in the Library of the Episcopal Seminary of Asti are on display. Specimens of those early advertising posters that appeared in towns where acrobats, jugglers, horse riders and street performers performed; dating from the 1780s-1820s, these prints document the main acrobatic or illusionistic exercises offered to the public. Also among the works on display is an important puppet theater dating from the late 18th century, and a section of the exhibition is devoted specifically to magic lanterns, optical boxes, and fantascopes, for which La Venaria Reale has partnered with the National Museum of Cinema in Turin. The exhibition is enriched by the direction and narration of Arturo Brachetti, who not only leads visitors inside the exhibition, but through storytelling projects them into the era to which the exhibits refer, evoking sounds, cries and images of the squares and courts.

The exhibition Photos at Play! A Tale of 18 Italian Photographers is curated by Giangavino Pazzola, in collaboration with Camera - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia di Torino, and set up by Peter Bottazzi. It presents the world of street games and outdoor entertainment as seen through the lens of eighteen famous Italian photographers who document the transformation of the many ways of playing and having fun from after World War II to the birth of the modern entertainment industry. On display are more than 120 color and black-and-white photographs depicting people of all ages intent on various playful activities, as well as habits, professions and places that have delineated a new relationship of people with the concept of leisure. The exhibition aims to recount the transformations of the social idea of play from 1960 to the present, verifying the different ways through which sports and entertainment activities have taken on an increasingly structured dimension in contemporary society since the post-World War II period. It also intends to highlight how photography has changed over time, from the Neorealist period to a more environmental depiction that results in the 1980s and 1990s in an impersonal dimension devoid of sociality. Finally, in recent times, photographers focus mainly on the representation of the public or draw on the mythology of the square game to reshape it in a poetic key. Among the great photographers featured are Mario Giacomelli, Nino Migliori, Ferdinando Scianna, Letizia Battaglia, Lori Sammartino, and Marisa Rastellini. Through the work of several protagonists of Italian photography and art at the international level, such as Paola Agosti, Olivo Barbieri, Mario Cresci, Paola Di Bello, Luigi Ghirri, Grazia Toderi and Massimo Vitali, an interpretation of not only the process of urbanization of the Italian landscape is highlighted, but also the rise of a diversity in public tastes, a depersonalization of spaces and the proliferation of the commercial offer of leisure use. Completing the exhibition is a focus on the circus with works by Giovanni Gastel, Roselena Ramistella and Paolo Ventura, who elevate the circus to an interpretative metaphor for the current human condition. Also featured in the exhibition are video works by Fabio Mauri and Walter Niedermayr that question the viewer about the freedom of the playful gesture.

From July 22, 2022 to January 15, 2023, Venaria Reale will present the first major exhibition to investigate video games as a tenth art form, highlighting their profound impacts in contemporary society. Curated by Guido Curto and Fabio Viola, with staging by Officina delle Idee of Turin, the exhibition places the digital canvases of the great video game masters in dialogue with the great artists of the past and present, inviting the public to reflect on the new aesthetics, cultures, politics and economies of the 21st century.

In addition to the exhibitions, the PLAY schedule offers various game-related events: from April 17, the Sundays of Play started; from June 2 to 6, the World Championship of Street Magic will be held; on June 9, there will be a meeting with Stefano Bartezzaghi dedicated to the meaning of the word game; from July 22 to August 13, the Summer Evenings at the Reggia return; from September 13 to 18, the Corollaria exhibition review returns. Finally, from Sept. 10 to Oct. 15 there will be the Reggia! Liberi tutti, a cycle of read alouds and playful lectures curated by writer Giuseppe Culicchia: six appointments where well-known Italian writers will talk about authors and books with a playful theme, with an invitation also to (re)read great literary classics.

For more information: lavenaria.it

Photo by Emanuele Riccio.

Venaria Reale offers a rich game-themed schedule. The scheduled exhibitions and events

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