PALCOSCENICI ARCHEOLOGICI [ARCHAEOLOGICAL STAGES] - Curatorial Interventions by Francesco Vezzoli | 11 June 2021 – 9 January 2022 | Archaeological Park and Santa Giulia Museum Via dei Musei, Brescia

From Friday 11 June 2021 to Sunday 9 January 2022, the Fondazione Brescia Musei is presenting Palcoscenici Archeologici. Interventi curatorali di #francescovezzoli [Archaeological Stages. Curatorial Interventions by Francesco Vezzoli], an original site-specific exhibition project that follows the project thread of exhibitions conceived by the #fondazionebresciamusei, chaired by Francesca Bazoli and directed by Stefano Karadjov, combining its own major historical and archaeological heritage with the most interesting voices of contemporary art. 

Palcoscenici Archeologici sees Francesco Vezzoli (Brescia, 1971), one of the Italian authors who is best known and most appreciated on the international panorama, as protagonist in the double guise of artist and curator of an exhibition itinerary in which eight of his works are installed in the evocative archaeological spaces of the #fondazionebresciamusei. 

The initiative is part of the programme of celebrations for the return to the city of Brescia of the Vittoria Alata, the Roman bronze that, after restoration at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, and now placed back in her ancient position in the Capitolium of the Archaeological Park of Roman Brescia, is now spreading her wings wide enough to touch the contemporary world. 

The project participated in and won the competition run by the Italian Council (7^th Edition, 2019), a programme of promotion of contemporary Italian art worldwide by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, thanks to which the work Nike Metafisica (2019) by #francescovezzoli will take its place in the collections of the Municipality of Brescia managed by the #fondazionebresciamusei. Palcoscenici Archeologici received the award for the major quality of its conception and for its capacity to make contemporary art resound with archaeology and ancient art in a cohesive and harmonious way.

Francesco Vezzoli’s curatorial interventions wind their way through Brixia. Archaeological Park of Roman Brescia, where #vittoriaalata is located, and continue into the Republican Shrine, onto the terrace of the Capitolium, into the first and second cell, but also into the Roman Theatre, to then go into the Museum Complex of Santa Giulia, more specifically the chapel of Sant'Obizio in the Basilica of San Salvatore, into the Domus of the Ortaglia and along the Roman section of the museum. In each of these stages, the layout – curated by Filippo Bisagni – envisages the presence of a recent sculpture by Vezzoli that will thus enter into a dialogue with the city’s main Roman and Longobard remanants. An exhibition route that will physically take visitors in chronological order through a thousand years of the history of art and architecture. 

An eclectic artist, capable of creating a dialogue between the imaginary world of today and sophisticated historical artistic references, Vezzoli his always addressed his poetics at ancient art, connecting it to the past and its icons. His practice winds its way among various languages, expressions of more or less remote past time in the history of humanity, and turns it into an interplay of references and mixtures from high and low culture, from classical culture, solemn, eternal, to pop culture, a media-based, fleeting meteor. 

For the first time the artist will display his sculptures – truly ancient and then remodelled, or else directly inspired by antiquity – inside a space that is not contemporary, but it too historical, in some way reconnecting the works with their original archaeological context. An operation of this type, unique and ambitious, can only be put into practice in a city such as Brescia, the Roman archaeological pole of Northern Italy.

Palcoscenici Archeologici envisages a series of events associated with important partner institutions: the first will see the Fondazione MAXXI of Rome play host to a talk on the theme of archaeology in dialogue with contemporary art.

With this project the #fondazionebresciamusei confirms its role as a dynamic, project-oriented and visionary cultural pole, able to realize original dialogues with the art of our time. Palcoscenici Archeologici takes its place along this line of interventions in which contemporary art is investigated in relation to its present time and to its capacity to construct new questions. The project is in fact an integral part of the programme to increase the appreciation of contemporary art, which is also supported thanks to the Romeda-Courtright legacy. In 2019, with the exhibition We will also have better days. Works from the Turkish prisons, the Kurdish artist Zehra Doğan conducted a vibrant topical reflection underlining the relationship between contemporary works and human rights.