The absolute protagonist of Neoclassicism in sculpture meets the capital of marble. From 1 August 2019 to 10 June 2020, CARMI - Carrara and Michelangelo Museum in Villa Fabbricotti presents CANOVA - The journey to Carrara, an engaging exhibition of artworks, documents and multimedia installations, designed and organised by Cose Belle d’Italia Media Entertainment with CARMI Museum.
From 1 August 2019 to 10 June 2020, CARMI - Carrara and Michelangelo Museum in Villa Fabbricotti presents CANOVA - The journey to Carrara, an exhibition curated by Mario Guderzo, Director of the Gypsotheca and Antonio Canova Museum of Possagno (Treviso) with the contribution of an international scientific committee.
The exhibition, designed and organised by Cose Belle d’Italia Media Entertainment in exclusive and in collaboration with the CARMI Museum, studies the relationship between Antonio Canova (1757-1822) and Carrara, the international capital of marble, and brings together five precious original plaster models with the documents kept at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara. The Accademia boasts a rich gallery of plaster models and this year it celebrates 250 years since it was founded, with a spectacular multimedia journey exploring Canova’s whole story, narrated to the public by Adriano Giannini with music by the cellist Giovanni Sollima.
The exhibition is made particularly interesting because, included in the artist’s rich creative world, some letters from the State Archives of Massa, and a contract of 1783, which up to now was unknown, between Count del Medico Staffetti and Antonio Canova (Andrea Sarteschi collection, Sarzana) for the purchase of the blocks that were necessary to make the “Monumento funebre di Clemente XIV”.
The exhibition has been installed within the splendid setting of the CARMI Museum that opened on 2 June 2018 in the 19th century Villa Fabbricotti, in the Padula Park, which is home to a collection of environmental sculptures. There are six rooms with a strong emotional impact, in which precious artworks like the “Maddalena giacente”, one of Canova’s last plaster models that has recently been restored by the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara, have been included in the multimedia exhibition, in order to highlight and explain the meaning of one of the most fascinating creative processes of the history of European sculpture.
So, moving from room to room, different languages meet in a single story that takes the public along a surprising journey through Canova’s mind, witnessed with sculptures, documents and engaging documentaries, and that offers a cultural experience of great scientific rigor.
After an introduction on the “Life and artworks of Antonio Canova”, the exhibition starts, in a dense dialogue between material and immaterial, with a whole room dedicated to the genesis of Canova’screative process and the Graces. Then a stop at one of the sculptor’s greatest masterpieces “Paolina Borghese”. The visit moves on with evocative installations dedicated to the relationship between “Canova and dance” and a study of “Canova, the journey to Carrara and the Accademia di Belle Arti”. This is a story within a story, which aims to celebrate the meeting between the greatest ambassador of Italian beauty in the world and the capital of marble. The exhibitions concludes with the imaginative fable of Cupid and Psyche which has the last of the five plaster models owned by the Accademia, the splendid “Venere e Adone”. CANOVA – The journey to Carrara ends here but ideally it continues with a visit to the city and to the Accademia di Belle Arti that houses more models by Canova.
CANOVA - The journey to Carrara is the third exhibition designed and organised by Cose Belle d’Italia Media Entertainment, after “Magister Canova”, Scuola Grande della Misericordia of Venice (2018) and “C+”, the two immersive islands that accompanied the “Canova and Antiquity” at the NationalArchaeological Museum of Naples. The project was organised in collaboration with CARMI – Carrara and Michelangelo Museum and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara, on the initiative of and thanks to the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Carrara.
CANOVA – The journey to Carrara has the patronage of the MIBAC, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage,the Region of Tuscany, the Province of Massa Carrara, the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara.
LOCATION
CARMI. Museo Carrara e Michelangelo.
Villa Fabbricotti, Parco Padula, Via Sorgnano 42, 54033 Carrara, (MS)
OPENING HOURS
1 August 2019 – 14 September 2019
1– 10 June 2020
Tuesday/Sunday: 11.00 – 19.00
Thursday (August 2019): 11.00 – 23.00
15 September 2019 – 31 May 2020
Tuesday and Wednesday 9.30 – 12.30
Thursday/Sunday: 9.30 – 12.30 and 15.00 – 17.00
CONTACT DETAILS FOR THE PUBLIC
Tel. +39 3351047450
museo.carmi at comune.carrara.ms.it
Infopoint Stadio +39 0585 844136
www.musei.carrara.ms.it
PRESS OFFICE
Cose Belle d’Italia Media Entertainment
Barabino & Partners
+39 02 72023535
Paola Cuccia p.cuccia at barabino.it
Sara Isabella Scuri s.scuri at barabino.it
Photo Venere e Adone, Antonio Canova, Calco in gesso, 1789-1794, Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara © Michele Ambrogi
