Events in the new year begin on 30 January with a performance of “The Magic Flute according to the Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio”, for the first time in Venice, to mark the 20th edition of the Ethnomusicology Seminar. The many activities in 2015 include conferences, exhibitions, drama, music and dance.
One of the major attractions will be the new season at the Palazzo Cini Gallery at San Vio, due to open on 25 April
In 2015 the Institute for Music will celebrate thirty years by publishing online the archives of composers Bruni Tedeschi, Casella, Cisilino, Malipiero and Respighi for a total of 20,000 items. Together with 12,800 images from the Theatre Iconographic Archive, they will be the first Cini archives to go online
Venice, 15 December 2015 – 6 new important exhibition projects, over 20 conferences, study days or seminars, 4 concerts and a Prize, as well as 24 scholarships and over 30 publications. These are the facts and figures of the main cultural activities planned for 2015 by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, whose programmes were approved today by the board of directors, chaired by Giovanni Bazoli.
In 2015 the Fondazione Cini will consolidate its academic reputation thanks to the activities of its Institutes and Research Centres, which organise conferences, study days and seminars in various disciplines, such as art history, with the conference on Fulvio Bianconi (4 February 2015) or The Young Jacopo Tintoretto (28 – 29 May 2015); music, with the seminar on Italian composers and cinema: 1945-1975 (5 – 6 December 2015) or the International Ethnomusicology Seminar, which this year celebrates its 20th edition (29 – 31 January 2015). In addition to these activities, the Foundation will continue to develop and make the most of its buildings, furnishings, and material and intangible heritage on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore while promoting the study of its archives, thanks also to the creation of 24 scholarships worth a total of over 100,000 euros (the calls for applications are published: https://www.cini.it/en/vittore-branca-center/scholarships).
The cultural activities for 2015 may be divided into the following macro-areas:
The major events next year include the seasonal opening of the Palazzo Cini Gallery at San Vio, from 25 April to 15 November 2015. The new season will feature exhibitions and cultural and educational activities (Art Conversations, lectures, interpretations and guided tours) reflecting the nature of the museum and according to strategies highlighting the special features of the Palazzo Cini collection. It will also be a means of promoting and making better known the Foundation’s other art collections.
In spring, in concomitance with the Gallery opening, an exhibition devoted to Ettore Spaletti on the second-floor piano nobile will present works specially created by the artist in an intimate and close relationship with the setting. The exhibition will be staged in collaboration with the Studio La Città, Verona. In autumn, the same second-floor space will host an exhibition of a significant group of drawings from the Giuseppe Fiocco Collection,held bythe Institute of Art History. In 2015 the Guest at the Palace will continue with two more “surprises”.Organised in collaboration with major international institutions (begun last spring with the display of Bronzino’s Young Man with Lute, courtesy of the Uffizi), the series involves welcoming into the rooms of the Gallery’s permanent collection “guests works” to create a dialogue in terms of form and content with the other works.
In 2015 4 exhibitions will be staged on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Das Meisterstück. Die europäische Malerpalette (Palladian Refectory, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 7 May – 7 June 2015), a series of photographs by the German artist Matthias Schaller, portraying the palettes of artists who have shaped the last 200 years of European painting – Bacon, Cézanne, Chagall, Courbet, Dalí, Delacroix, Degas, van Gogh, Kandinsky, Klee, Matisse, Monet, Morandi, Modigliani, Munch, Picasso, Twombly and Turner. Each palette is a kind of “indirect portrait” of the artist and his pictorial technique. Magdalena Abakanowicz: Crowd and Individual(Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 7 May – 7 June 2015), an exhibition in which Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, who uses textiles as her principal sculptural medium, will show around 80 jute figures as part of her Crowds series. The exhibition will be staged in collaboration with Magdalena Abakanowicz’s studio in Warsaw and the Beck & Eggeling Gallery.
Lastly, there will two exhibitions organised by Le Stanze del Vetro (Rooms for Glass), the long-term project to study and promote 20th-century Venetian glass,set up jointly by Pentagram Stiftung and the Fondazione Cini. Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger collection, 1932 – 1973 (Le Stanze del Vetro, 12 April – 2 August 2015) will feature a wide-ranging selection of items now in the Bischofberger collection from the “illustrious years” of modern Finnish glass, while Fulvio Bianconi at the Venini (Le Stanze del Vetro, September 2015 – January 2016) is an exhibition in the series on designers who worked for the historic Venini glassworks. An unusual combination of graphic artist, illustrator and industrial designer with an art background, Fulvio Bianconi (Padua, 1915 – Milan, 1996) met Paolo Venini on Murano in 1946, thus starting a fruitful collaboration with the glassworks.
The special initiatives for next year include the second edition of the International Poetry Translation Prize named afterBenno Geiger (his literary archive is preserved and used on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore),which was set up in 2014 by the Fondazione Cini, in compliance with Elisabetta Paolina Geiger’s will. The second edition of the prize has a significant addition: the jury will be able to award an extra prize for the best first work or for the best young translator. The prizes will be awarded at an official ceremony on 22 October 2015.
2015 will also see the tenth edition of Books at San Giorgio, a series of six presentations of the latest Fondazione Cini publications, the outcome of its Institutes’ research activities in various disciplines: art history, 20th-century music, Venetian history, Vivaldi, drama and ethnomusicology. In the last ten years the Fondazione Cini has published over 250 publications and has presented 60 of them at these launches (books of essays, art catalogues, critical editions of music, and magazines). The guest speakers at the launches are leading figures from the world of culture and offer audiences of specialists and enthusiasts evidence of the vitality and variety of the cultural production on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore.