The autumn season at Intesa Sanpaolo’s Gallerie d’Italia is set to feature a wide range of exhibitions spanning different historical eras and subjects. The lineup includes a multimedia installation based on over sixty thousand images from the bank’s Publifoto archive, a study on the contribution of women to the arts in 17th-century Naples, and an exploration of Neoclassicism between Rome and Milan, which will feature the display of the ‘Honors of Italy’ regalia used by Napoleon for his coronation as King of Italy in Milan’s Duomo in 1805.
Michele Coppola, Director of the Gallerie and Executive Director of Art, Culture, and Historical Heritage of Intesa Sanpaolo, explained: “Each initiative stems from the desire to attract, intrigue, and engage diverse audiences, offering, across all four of the Bank’s museum venues, opportunities for knowledge, the sharing of values, and civic and social growth.” In the first six months of the year, the four venues in Turin, Milan, Naples, and Vicenza welcomed 420,000 visitors.
New exhibitions await them from autumn. The first to open, on September 11 in Turin, is a multimedia installation by Dutch artist Erik Kessels. It utilizes over 60,000 images from the Publifoto archive, with artificial intelligence linking them in a continuous flow to create a narrative of Italy through famous faces, news reports, war, society, and politics.
Also in Turin, from October 9, the exhibition ‘Jeff Wall. Photographs’, curated by David Company, will feature works by the photographer from the 1970s onwards. Then, from November 12, an exhibition dedicated to Riccardo Ghilardi and his celebrity portraits, created in collaboration with the National Cinema Museum celebrating its 25th anniversary, will open.
In Vicenza, ‘Cristina Mittermeier. The Great Wisdom’, curated by Lauren Johnston with National Geographic, is scheduled from October 3. Following its success in Turin and Palermo, it will present new shots by the Mexican photographer and activist.
In Naples, ‘Women of Spanish Naples. Another Seventeenth Century’, opening November 20, will explore the female contribution to the arts, from painting and singing to literature.
Finally, in Milan, ‘Eternal and Vision. Rome and Milan, Capitals of Neoclassicism’ opens on November 28. Produced with the Bibliothèque National de France, it will feature works by artists like Antonio Canova—the exhibition will open with the colossal plaster horse from the Museo Civico di Bassano del Grappa, which has undergone major conservation work for the 20th edition of Intesa Sanpaolo’s ‘Restituzioni’ program—Giuseppe Bossi, and Andrea Appiani, the ‘chronicler’ of Napoleon’s epic. The ‘Honors of Italy’ regalia, also restored through the ‘Restituzioni’ program, will be displayed.