2 October 2013
1.Peggy Guggenheim museum
The Building
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is the most important museum in Italy for European and American art of the first half of the twentieth century. It is based in Venice at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal, in what was once the home of Peggy Guggenheim. Opened in 1951 by the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, wealthy American industrialist and art collector, the museum houses the personal collection of art of the twentieth century of Peggy Guggenheim, but also works from other collections and temporary exhibitions.
Permanent Collection
The museum houses the personal collection of Peggy Guggenheim , which includes masterpieces of Cubism, Futurism , Metaphysical painting , European abstraction , avantgarde sculpture , Surrealism and American Abstract Expressionism , of some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. These include Picasso (The Poet , On the Beach ) , Braque ( The Clarinet ) , Duchamp ( Sad Young Man on Train), Léger ( Men in the City ) , Brancusi ( Maiastra , Bird in Space ) , Severini ( Sea = Dancer ) , Picabia ( Very Rare Picture on the earth ) , de Chirico ( the Red Tower , the Nostalgia of the Poet ) , Mondrian ( Composition no. 1 with gray and red 1938 / Composition with Red 1939) , Kandinsky (Landscape with red Spots 2 ) , Miró ( Woman session II) , Giacometti ( Woman slaughtered , Woman walking ) , Klee ( magic Garden ) , Ernst ( the Kiss, the dressing of the bride) , Magritte ( empire of Light ) , Dalí (Birth of liquid Desires ) , Pollock ( the moon Woman , Alchemy ) , Gorky ( Untitled ) , Calder ( Arc of Petals ) and Marini (Angel of the city) .
2. Punta della Dogana: Prima Materia
The Building
With its perfectly triangular shape, Punta della Dogana split the Grand Canal from the Giudecca Canal. The former monumental port of the city is the seat of the permanent collection of works from the François Pinault after a major redevelopment project commissioned by François Pinault Foundation. The building is so unique and distinctive, so changing function for the first time in its history, leaving the trades and becoming the
harbor mouth to the peaks representative of contemporary artistic production and the place of choice to share it with the wider public.
Exposition: “Prima Materia” i.e. Primal Substance
The artistic innovations of the late sixties , often expressed in the abstraction , and sometimes through the void , they had as a background images of wars , protests and social unrest . In the same years a new vision of social equality was born and became aware of problems such as the present and future condition of the environment in which we live. Today, science and technology offer the opportunity to connect globally through social networks , an endless amount of images accessible and , ultimately, longer life expectancy and the use of renewable energy. Yet there is a climate of anxiety generated by opponents often invisible and abstract, such as global warming or terrorism technology. There is a cacophony of images and sounds media . If the purpose of most of the works of nineteenth-century art was to represent the truth through beauty and balance, by the end of the twentieth century art tends to reconcile the extremes – abstraction and surrealism, vacuum and chaos, denial and show , high and low. From the artistic point of view , this is an age of global pluralism . Four basic forms of expression – painting, sculpture, installation, performance – are blended from the “Prima Materia” of the media; this term is not only the substance of the films or videos or the
Internet, but means of communication and the overall discussion. There are hundreds of different definitions and descriptions of the “Prima Materia” : primal substance which distinguishes and together constitute earth, air , fire and water ; formless substratum of all material, including soul and body, sun and moon, love and light , imagination and consciousness , but also urine, blood, dirt. It was sought in the dark soil of the woods and within the human body . It is the primordial chaos that exists before time and any chance of a future. The definitions of this medium that embodies all the elements vary in cultural perspective or personal identity. Sometimes represented in a circle like a snake biting its tail; the first matter is pure essence , everything and nothing , everywhere and nowhere , and can take many forms.
3. Manet, Back in Venice at Palazzo Ducale
The exhibition arose from the need of a critical study on the cultural models that inspired the young Manet during the years of his early start to painting. These models, up to now almost exclusively referring to the influence of Spanish painting on his art, were otherwise very close to the Italian Renaissance painting. In addition to his masterpieces, there are some exceptional works by Titian, Tintoretto and Lotto in particular. As is well known, studies of Manet, the great forerunner of Impressionism, have for a long time focused on the idea of one of his direct descent from the opera painting by Velázquez and Goya, seeing it right in painting spagnoal not only ‘only source of its modernity, but also the reason and the stimulus for its shunning “returns” to the academic tradition. A progressive approach, so to speak, that does not take account of the passion of Manet for Italian art of the Renaissance, which was a really intense fascination and a tie with Italy and the lagoon city.
Italy, moreover, is not absent even in the paintings of Manet’s more related to Spain: its religious painting draws as much by Titian and Andrea del Sarto as El Greek and Velázquez. His still lifes silent behind the faithfulness to the formulas Dutch, many surprises that not only refer to the Nordic tradition, but also seem to be inspired by an Italian chromatic force. When the painter approaches definitively to the “modern” Paris, his
painting does not leave the memory of Italian, but it is full of memories.
4. Gallerie dell’Accademia
The monumental complex of the Gallerie dell’Accademia now occupies the prestigious headquarters of the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carita, one of the oldest lay confraternities of the city. Are an integral part also the homonymous church of Santa Maria and Monastery of the Lateran Canons, designed by Andrea Palladio.The museum houses the largest collection of Venetian paintings from the fourteenth century Byzantine and Gothic to Renaissance artists, Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Veronese, Tintoretto and Tiziano until Giambattista Tiepolo and the eighteenth-century landscape painters, Canaletto, Guardi, Bellotto, Longhi. Artists who influenced the history of European painting. It preserves also other forms of art such as sculptures and drawings, among which the famous Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci (exposed only on special occasions).
5. Natural History Museum of Venice
The Building
The palace said Fontego dei Turchi, which houses the Museum was built by Giacomo Palmieri, founder of the noble family of Pesaro, in the first half of the thirteenth century. In 1381 it was purchased by the Republic of Venice, which he sold to the Marquis of Ferrara Nicholas V D’Este for the loyalty demonstrated in the war of Chioggia. An important chapter in its history began in 1621, when the Republic destined him to Turkish merchants as sales office, which held it until 1838. Detailed rules and strict he governed the operations, the schedules of daily life to the mode of trade. It was, inter alia, for a clear separation between inside Turks Europeans (Bosnians and Albanians) on one side, and Turks of Constantinople and Asia (Persian and Armenian) on the other. The Turkish merchants in Venice especially imported wax, oil, raw wool and leather, which was added in 1700 also tobacco goods were sold or exchanged with other products. The Fontego dei Turchi was totally rebuilt from 1860.
Collections
One of the institutional tasks of a Natural History Museum is to preserve the collections inherited by naturalists of the past and build on this heritage through the acquisition of new material. For this it is essential that the museum is equipped, as well as exhibition spaces, some of the areas intended for storage. These places are not directly accessible to the visitor where the collections are stored, available on request, by scholars and researchers. In warehouses environmental parameters must be kept within limits that allow optimal preservation of the finds, although these are periodically monitored to check the conditions and detect early signs of deterioration.The items that are damaged are restored by skilled personnel in the laboratory of biological preparations located in the Museum, where they are also prepared new materials for both the increase in collections of the deposits and used for the purposes of study for both exposure and enjoyment of teaching. The set of collections representing the history of the museum and research carried out by naturalists, both locally, and in distant lands. The collections originating from naturalistic researches in the local area make up the physical evidence and the historical memory of the territory and its transformation over time. That’s why specimens of the same species may be present in most collections, related to geographical areas and time periods, the study of the specimens and their ecology can indeed provide valuable information on the
state of the environment and its transformations. Other collections, which for the most part come from donations, are the result of trips and expeditions to discover unknown lands and is therefore palaeontological, ethnological, anthropological, geographical. Today, the scientific heritage of the Museum consists of over two million pieces.
1. Comparation to Biennale
From a cultural point of view, living in Venice is a challenge and a fortune, as the great cultural heritage is an open road calls for the courage of the way to produce new culture and not to be trapped in the gilded cage of the ephemeral glory of the past. The meeting / clash between the Venetian museums and exhibitions around the pavilions of the Biennale are a reality interesting and fruitful, because the museums collect the assets of an identity, the Biennale offers a look ahead, a look experimental, one look
fragile on the future of art that will be. At the Biennale there are artists who give birth to their works. These artists follow the current cultural or decide to go against the tide, however, feel that the lure of inspiration is urgent and must produce without worrying if their works be understood. At the Biennale no one knows if those artistic productions will
one day be preserved in a museum. No one knows if those artistic productions will one day a masterpiece, a work of art that future generations will admire. The museum houses a heritage, the Biennale designs, casts a glance at the future. The Biennale is not asked to provide a statement of artistic production because it is an exposition, i.e. exhibition. Ex-position means that I go out (ex-) from my location to another location, to another path.
It is true that a museum can offer temporary collections, but collections are always an asset. The museum helps to reflect on the way that the artistic culture has made over the centuries and is expected to help the human being to understand its own mobile identity, oscillating between past, present and future. What represents a museum and what offers a Biennale are a reality not in antagonism and not mutually exclusive. Are in mutual exchange and relationship. It would be disastrous if one of them happen a communication of the deaf, as both would lose vitality and fertility, would be condemned to sterility and would be imprisoned in the sophistic dialectic between old and new, because what is old can be new inside and outside what new outside can being old inside. I mean, if I make a new work of art, it must be able to communicate something, do not just appear, it must touch and vibrate the strings of my soul and my mind. The work of art is not a matter of privacy, but it is a public issue. What
we produce, no longer belongs to you, but it belongs to the public, so that you create a triangular relationship between artist, audience and artwork. The work of art does not seek and do not want to mere spectators as when we sit at home to watch television. A work of art seeks and asks the people who know how to contemplate. But to contemplate should
be able to stop. This I think is the challenge for the next human civilization: to learn to stop and contemplate. At the Biennale there are numerous artistic productions that are expressed mostly through short movies or videos. A movie, I watch it but I’m not educated to contemplate, because the images are constantly moving and reflect the fact that I, a human being of this time, I
find it hard to stop or are not able to stop except to eat (perhaps ) and sleep (maybe). Maybe exception is the work of Kazem, in which there is a two minute video that shows the movement of the sea, an image so moving but highly stimulating to the contemplation.Be that as it may, the museum says what I have been. Biennial says what I am today. Maybe, inshallah, if it keeps alive the relationship between the museum and two years, the future of mankind will have the high hopes of civilization… because the images have a soul and maybe someone forgot about it… I mean the artist’s soul, mirror of the Mankind.
The UAE
Sharjah
I never visited it. So I surfed on the web. Searching on the web I found out that Sharjah City was crowned by UNESCO in 1998 as the Cultural Capital of the Arab world, thanks to the efforts by the responsible bodies inartistic and cultural field.
The emirate boasts 15 museums, almost all concentrated in the capital city is located in the center of the Archaeological Museum, which displays artifacts recovered during the excavations carried out in the area, a witness to the rich past of the territory, and that also presents an interesting wing used as a library which houses ancient manuscripts and texts, in the area the “souq Al Bahar” is the “Sharjah Art Museum,” an exhibition held in 32 halls where they meet paintings and lithographs, some of which came from the private collection of the Emir, not very far here is the Islamic Museum, with its collection of ancient and rare manuscripts, as well as crafts from Morocco and Afghanistan. To make a leap into the past, we must go to the “Sharjah Heritage Museum,” a faithful reconstruction of the typical old house of the Emir, feature the exhibition of clothes, jewelry and vintage toys.
Focused on weapons and combat vehicles is the Museum Sharjah Police, which also houses a small scale reconstructions of old forts, including that of the strong “Al Husn” built in 1820 by Sheikh Sultan bin Saqr Al Qasimi, now restored and can be visited with a display of weapons, jewelry and vintage photographs.
Abu Dhabi
It will adopt a Louvre in large format, The Cultural District is aiming to open the Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2015, while in 2016 the Zayed National Museum will open in 2017 and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi: art for an injection of capital of the United Arab Emirates, founded in 1791 by the tribe Bedouin of the Banu Yas and today one of the richest cities in the world thanks to a wealth of the most significant oil. Partners of this cultural operation are Agence France Museums, The British Museum and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. In this regard, the Abu Dhabi Executive Council said: “The museums of the Saadiyat Island Cultural District will help make Abu Dhabi one of the leading destinations in the world culture and tourism and encourage communication
and the integration of different cultures”. Today Abu Dhabi offers the effervescent technology of the contemporary and the flavor of ancient traditions, places like Qasr AlHosn, where the history triumphs and cultural sites such as Al Ain, the Garden City of the
Museum Al Ain, within the strong Al Jahili, hosts precious archaeological artefacts.
If this is so, this confirms that the art does not know the colors of the flags and that it can speak to everyone through a variety of expressions. When the mind and the heart of the human being is not darkened by the smoke of any fundamentalism, he comes close to the beauty of art, and where there is beauty, there is life, and where there is life, there is God .. saw that he was very creative during the act of creation, if I am allowed to write so.
