MUSEUMS

Il Guggenheim. L’avanguardia americana 1945-1980
Guggenheim Collection: The American Avant-Garde 1945–1980 examines major developments in American art during a transformative period, marked by economic prosperity, political upheaval, and international conflict, as well as vibrant growth in the cultural sphere. The exhibition begins with the years following World War II, when the United States emerged as a global center for modern art and the rise of Abstract Expressionism drew international attention to a circle of artists working in New York. From this time forward, the post-war era witnessed a rich proliferation of varied aesthetic practices by American artists: from Pop art’s irreverent embrace of vernacular imagery to the intellectual meditations on meaning that characterized the 1960s, to Conceptualism, the spare aesthetic of Minimalism and the lush visuals of Photorealism in the 1970s. Though resulting in widely divergent artworks, these movements all shared a fundamental commitment to questioning the nature, purpose, and meaning of art.
The exhibition also reflects on the Guggenheim Museum’s role in shaping these developments through its long-standing support of emerging artists. Drawn primarily from the museum’s permanent collection in New York, the paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations on view include works by Jackson Pollock (shown here) and Arshile Gorky from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and Robert Rauschenberg’s Barge (1962–63) from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Via Nazionale at Via Milano (between Piazza Venezia and Piazza della Repubblica)
Tuesday-Thursday 10 am – 8 pm, Friday, Saturday, 10 am – 10:30 pm; Sunday, 10 am – 8 pm
February 7 through May 6 tel 06 399 67500

Also at this museum:
Massimo Giannoni – Triptychs
Giannoni’s new cycle of paintings, four large-scale triptychs measuring seven meters in width, reveal the fundamental findings of his artistic research. Giannoni portrays topics typical of our time and collective imagination, contrasts and contradictions that lead to the elaboration of thoughts. His paintings evoke an interior silence that opposes contemporary chaos, a confrontation between the speed of today’s communication and places of timeless beauty. Depictions of frenetic and agitated stock exchange markets dialogue with the stillness of bookshops and libraries. Giannoni takes the idea of contrast to its limits. The lights and shades of great city views – emblems of civic life – juxtaposed with the rigor of spiritual places that invite respect and introspection.
Palazzo delle Esposizioni via Nazionale 194 (between Piazza della Repubblica and Piazza Venezia)
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 10 am – 8 pm; through February 26 tel 06 489 411

Homo sapiens: La Grande storia della diversità umana
(The great history of human diversity)
Two hundred thousand years ago Homo sapiens began the journey from a small valley in what is today's Ethiopia, ultimately colonizing the entire planet forming the great variety of peoples and cultures we know today. For the first time, an international group of scientists from various disciplines, coordinated by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, have created an exhibition reconstructing the roots and routes of human settlement. Geneticists, linguists, anthropologists and paleo-anthropologists have combined the results of their research into a wonderful fresco of the history of human evolution, an interactive multimedia exhibition is composed of six sections describing the adventures and extraordinary travels, largely unknown, which generated the mosaic of human diversity.
extended through April 9

Luoghi Comuni. Vedutisti francesi a Roma
tra il XVIII e il XIX secolo
French landscape painters of the 18th and 19th centuries
A selection of 70 works, comprised of water-colors and engravings by French artists working in the Rome during the second half of the 18th century through the early decades of the 19th century. These works, preserved in the graphic arts collection of the Museum of Rome, were intended for sale to foreign travelers as souvenirs. Hubert Robert , Charles Joseph Natoire, Victor-Jean Nicolle, Abraham-Louis Rodolphe Ducros and Jean-Louis Desprez were inspired by Rome’s urbanscape. Their works depict popular views from all angles of the city and tell the story of ancient ruins covered in vegetation or offer visions of the Roman countryside.
Museo di Roma, Palazzo Braschi Piazza San Pantaleo, 2 (Piazza Navona)
Tuesday-Sunday; 10 - 8 pm; through March 30


Antica Cartografia d’Italia
Celebrates the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. On loan from the private collection of Gianni Brandozzi are some 200 antique maps (carte geogarphiche) of Italy and prints mapping combat during the battles of the Risorgimento. The exhibition is divided into four sections, each addressing a geographical theme. It should be noted that Italy has a dismal presence on  Ptolemaic maps dating from the 15th through the 19th century. However, a map printed in 1478 shows Italy and is one of the most historically significant documents in the exhibition. The "Tabula Peutingeriana", the document executed by Constantine in the fourth century depicting the route of travel across the entire Roman Empire, another important historical feature of the exhibition, is the oldest travel map (carta) not only in Italy but in all of Europe. The work on display was printed in Italy and consists of 12 sheets for a total length of about eight meters.
Complesso del Vittoriano, Via Di San Pietro on Carcere (Piazza Venezia)
Tuesday – Sunday, 9:30 am – 7:30 pm; through March 4  tel 06 678 0664

Jean-Marc Bustamante
The internationally-known French artist Jean-Marc Bustamante (born 1952) presents his first retrospective in Italy, a selection of work executed during the past 30 years, together with his choice of works by the Dutch painter Pieter Jansz Saenredam (1597-1665). In the late 1970s, Bustamante was one the pioneers of large format color photography along with the Düsseldorf School photographers. His work, paradoxically titled “Tableaux,” began a new way of creating and thinking about photography. Since the early 1980s, he has expanded his work, continuing to practice and exhibit photography, while moving on to sculpture, installation and, more recently, painting. The “Peintures” series is realized by scanning and enlarging small scrawls drawn with a Japanese brush, on large panels of Plexiglas. Saenredam is mostly known as the painter of Dutch church interiors, where the acute nudity of the spaces is sharpened by the exercise of rigorous perspectives and the appearance of geometric objects. There is no direct relation between Jean-Marc Bustamante and Saenredam, but there are some intuitive and tangible connections that visitors will likely experience. This show marks the second in a series of exhibitions to be hosted by the Academy, based on the idea that a living artist invites an artist from the past. The first edition, in 2010, associated the works of Ellsworth Kelly with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' paintings and drawings. 
Villa Medici – Accademia di Francia, Trinità dei Monti (top of the Spanish Steps)
Tuesday – Sunday, 10:45 am – 1 pm and 2-7 pm; through May 6

The Last Caravan - L'ultima carovana
A photographic and audio-visual exhibition presenting the works of contemporary Turkish photographer Arif Asci, who set off with a caravan of eight people and ten camels on the ancient trading route from Xian to Istanbul. The trip through Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Iran, lasted 18 months and covered 12,000 kilometers.
Mercati and Foro di Traiano (Trajan Market) Via IV Novembre 94
Tuesday – Sunday, 9 am - 7 pm; through March 11

All’infuori di me. Un percorso per immagini di Andrea Pacanowski
Photographer Andrea Pacanowski’s series of images captures moments of intense religiosity and ritual observed by the artist during travels to Jerusalem, Rome and North Africa during the Ramadan. His intent is to show “what is left outside of the individual experience of faith and becomes a community ritual, encounter, mass experience.” Pacanowski has worked both in Italy and abroad as a fashion and advertising photographer.
Museo di Trastevere Piazza S. Egidio, 1 b (Trastevere)
Tuesday-Sunday: 10 am - 8 pm; through March 30 tel 06 581 6563


Also at this museum:
Evgen Bavcar – Il buio è uno spazio
A selection of over 50 black-and-white and color images by the noted Slovenian photographer. Bavcar (1946 - ), who is completely blind explains that his work addresses the relations between vision, blindness and invisibility. “My task is the reunion of the visible and the invisible worlds, photography allows me to pervert the established method of perception amongst those who see and those who don’t.” through March 25 

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson – Immagini e Parole
Forty-four photographs in black and white, among the most impressive images by the great French master Henri Cartier-Bresson. Comments by writers, photographers and friends such as Aulenti, Balthus, Baricco, Cioran, Gombrich, Jarmusch, Kundera, Miller, Scianna, Sciascia, Steinberg and Varda accompany the photographs. the result of a project initiated a few years ago by a group who decided to celebrate the birthday of Henri Cartier-Bresson by asking intellectuals, writers, critics, photographers or even just friends of the great master to choose and comment on their favorite image.
Palazzo Incontro, Via Del Prefetti 22
Tuesday – Sunday, 10 am – 7 pm; through March 19

 

Santo Tomaino – Epic Painting
Born in Calabria in 1954, Tomaino Tomaino has worked in Turin since the '70s, focusing on aspects of painting, and the return to figurative art. His work makes reference to symbolic values and to American action painting. Using the constant, imaginative interweaving of myth and reality, he has developed a method employing metaphor to retrieve a pictorial narrative. This selection of major works drawn from the latest series of paintings, and a series of preparatory papers are on display for the first time in Rome.
Museo Carlo Bilotti – Aranciera Di Villa Borghese, Viale Fiorello La Guardia 4 (in the Borghese Gardens)
Tuesday – Sunday, 9 am – 7 pm; through March 8  tel 820  59 127

Also at this museum:
Stefano Cloffi. Still waiting (117795)
Neapolitan-born photographer and musician, Stefano Cloffi showing for the first time in a Roman museum presents a series of black-and-white images themed around relaxation and time. His images are a composite of stories narrated in simple details. The show is accompanied by a video presentation directed and scored by the artist and a slideshow installation of 150 images played in a loop.
through March 8  

1938-1945. La persecuzione degli ebrei in Italia.
Documenti per una storia
In conjunction with the National Day of Remembrance, when Italy remembers those who were persecuted under Nazi rule, this year, commemorating not just the Jews, but also the homosexuals and handicapped who were martyred. In 1939, Mussolini, in his desire to please the Fuhrer, initiated a comprehensive anti-Semitic campaign, including miscegenation laws and a media campaign against Jews. Jews were forbidden to teach in schools. Foreign Jews living as refugees in Italy were rounded up and confined in internment camps. In general the Italian people did not buy into the government's anti-Jewish policies, though Italian intellectuals were curiously silent. The situation took a dramatic turn for the worse in 1943 when Mussolini was overthrown and imprisoned. General Badoglio assumed the Prime Minister's post and immediately began negotiating a ceasefire with the Allies. Enraged, Hitler used force in an attempt to bring Italy back into the Axis fold as well as teach the Italians a lesson. Germany sent troops to occupy northern and central Italy. SS troops, along with the most zealous of Mussolini's supporters, began rounding up Jews in Rome, Milan, Genoa, Florence, Trieste, and other northern cities. In total about 8,000 Jews were deported to the Nazi death camps during the occupation. About 95% of them perished there. The remaining 40,000 Jews in Italy survived because of the refusal of common Italians, as well as lower-level Italian government and military authorities, to cooperate with the Nazis both before and during Germany's brutal occupation. Eighty percent of Italian Jews survived the Holocaust, while elsewhere in Europe as many as 80% of Jews were murdered. This exhibition illustrates the persecution of Jews in Italy from 1938 to 1945 with a scientific and historical approach, employing 38 display panels organized in 15 thematic sections.
Casa Della Memoria ,  Via Di San Francesco Di Sales 5
Monday – Friday, 9:30 am – 8 pm; through February 10  tel 06 687 6543
The Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education will unveil its new website, in which 433 interviews, recordied testimony of Italian survivors, will be available online, Monday, January 30. www.shoa.acs.beniculturali.it

UnForbidden City: la post –rivoluzione della nuove arte cinese
Am exhibition devoted to the latest trends in Chinese contemporary art, in which tradition and identity merge within the creative reality of transnational borders, a phenomenon the show’s curator, Achille Bonita Oliva defines as “Glocal”. The artists shown, represent a matrix generation, linked to student movements and the post-revolutionary underground culture. The aesthetic codes and formal solutions presented galvanize new media and popular culture in an attempt to build a new identity and artistic experience, hybrid and provocative. They includes photography, painting, installation performance and video art.
MACRO Testaccio Piazza Orazio Giustiniani
Tuesday – Sunday, 9 am – 9 pm; through March 4

Also at this museum:


Kim Minjung – Il Suono della luce
The work of the Korean artist Minjung Kim is a projection of the imaginary and the imagination. The confluence of Eastern and Western imagery permeates his work. These are not defined as landscapes, portraits or other items, but “paper-ink-brush-combustion”.
through March 4

Damien Hirst – Postcard from ….
Internationally renowned British artist, Damien Hirst inaugurates Fondazione Pastificio Cerere’s second edition of Postcard from…, a project conceived and curated by the foundation’s art director Marcello Smarrelli . Postcard from… involves four artists yearly who each create a poster measuring 400x300 cm, dimensions that reflect those used in billboard advertising. The poster will be installed in the Fondazione’s courtyard and will also be circulated in ten facilities in Rome managed by A.P.A. with the standard 14-day advertising turnover. During the duration of the exhibition, Hirst’s poster will also be exhibited at the main entrance of Rome’s MACRO– Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma museum. The Pasticificio Cerere Foundation aims to promote Italian and international artists in the contemporary art world by offering interesting and diversified exhibition programmes throughout its annual exhibition cycle.
The exhibition is produced in collaboration with A.P.A. - Agenzia Pubblicità Affissioni  and realized in conjunction with Gagosian Gallery’s exhibition: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011 by Damien Hirst.
Fondazione Pastificio Cerere,  Via Degli Ausoni 7  (San Lorenzo)
Monday – Friday, 3-7 pm; through March 10  tel 06 45422960

Il Gesù Bambino del Pintoricchio. Due dipinti a confronto
Two splendid works, rarely seen by the public, a fragment of a fresco configuring Gesù Bambino and a panel refiguring the Madonna and Baby Jesus from the the oeuvre of 15th century artist Pintoricchio (Bernardino di Betto of Perugia, 1455 – Sienna, 1513) are on view over the holiday season from the private collection of Fondazione Guglielmo Giordano and the Fondazione Sorgente Group respectively.
Pintoricchio is known for his ornate and decorative style, and for his interest in the rediscovery of the Antique. He is best remembered for his extraordinary fresco cycles. A consummate artist-craftsman, his keen observation of the material, his attention to detail from fabrics and costume accessories to everyday domestic objects and landscape  characterized his painting style. His rendering of the decorative crafts — ceramics, woodcarving, metalwork and textile — depicted with unparalleled skill, enriched his compositions, giving them an authenticity familiar to the everyday person.
Although there was a great demand for his work in Rome in the 1480s and 1490s when he was commissioned by successive Popes and Cardinals, and in Siena in the last decade of his life where he frescoed the Piccolomini Library of Pope Pius II, Giorgio Vasari, the 16th-century Florentine art historian was surprisingly unkind in his critical analysis of Pintoricchio. Vasari wrote that the artist “was simply lucky to have enjoyed the success he did — an unlikely scenario, given the intensity of the artistic competition in Italy in the late 15th and early 16th century.” Vasari claimed that Pintoricchio introduced tasteless decorative elements into his works for the sake of appealing to people who knew little about art. Today, the keenly observed still-life elements incorporated in his work are viewed as one of the most attractive aspects of his painting.
Musei Capitolino,   Piazza   Del Campidoglio 1  
Tuesday – Sunday, 9am – 8 pm; through February 5

 

Guercino 1591-1666.Capolavori Da Cento E Da Roma
Giovan Francesco Barbieri (Cento-Bologna, 1591-Roma, 1666) nicknamed Guercino, which means “cross-eyed”, was largely self-taught but very much influenced by the Carracci painters and particularly by Ludivico Caracci who encouraged him. Guercino came to prominence after completing the altarpiece of the “Investiture of Saint William”, an early work, commissioned in 1620 for the Pinoteca in Bologna. In 1621, he was invited to Rome to work for Pope Gregory XV. His ceiling fresco, “Aurora”, was painted for the Pope's nephew (Rome, Villa Ludovisi) and is considered a 17th-century masterpiece. Throughout his career, Guercino's style underwent dramatic changes. In Rome, he first felt pressured to paint in the popular classicizing style. Returning to Cento two years later, his dark shadows faded, strong movement disappeared, and details emerged distinctly in clear light. Guercino ran his Cento studio until 1642, when, after the death of Guido Reni, his rival and fellow exponent of the Scuola di Rimini painters, he moved to Bologna, taking over Reni's religious picture workshop and his role as the city's leading painter. Gurecino was also known as an amazing draughtsman. Art historian, Diane de Grazia sums up the lasting appeal of his drawings, “Even in his own day, the artist was admired for his vibrant and calligraphic pen sketches. He often made quick notations of forms to be used as studies for paintings or merely for his own pleasure. . . . Guercino must have been an indefatigable draughtsman, for after three centuries, what remains of his drawings is found in collections all over the world. His draughtsmanship, with its energetic flashes of the pen, has been much copied but never equalled".
Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Antica – Palazzo Barberini, Via Delle Quattro Fontane 13
Tuesday – Sunday, 8:30 am – 7 pm; through April 29 tel 064814591

Arte Povera alla Galleria Nazionale
An exhibition examining the historical aspects of Arte Povera Movement and the place it has garnered across the vast landscape of contemporary art, with special attention devoted to works by Alighiero Boetti, Luciano, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jannis Kounellis,  and Gilberto Zorio. A monograph of 20 works by painter and sculptor Pino Pascali (1935 – 1968) from the museum’s permanent collection will accompany the exhibition.
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna  Viale delle Belle Arti, 131 
(Parioli-Villa Borghese)
Tuesday – Sunday, 9:30 am - 7:00 pm; through March 4 tel 06 322981
Also at this museum:
Dopo la fotografia. Arte in Italia 1850 — 2000
An exhibition exploring the course and development of Italian art after the advent of photography through a series of key episodes, focusing on the competitive tensions between the two media, the use of photography in the planning stage of paintings and sculptures, its competition with engraving, the Futurist and Dadaist experimentations,  photo Pop art and finally, as a progressive fusion of artistic languages.
Gianfranco Baruchello. Certe idee
A solo exhibition covers phases of the artist's work, since the late fifties. Curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and Carla Subrizi, more than 60 works from Italian and European collections,  accompanied by a selection of documents and materials that reveal the artists’ continuous search for ideas, projects and actions.
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna Viale delle Belle Arti, 131  (Parioli-Villa Borghese)
Tuesday – Sunday, 9:30 am - 7:00 pm;  through March 4   tel 06 322981

Steve McCurry
More than 200 photographs shot over the course of 30 years by the American photojournalist. McCurry's career was launched when, disguised in native garb, he crossed the Pakistani border into rebel-controlled Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion.  When he emerged, he had rolls of film sewn into his clothes and images that would be published around the world, among the first to show the conflict there, winning him the coveted Robert Capa Gold Metal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad. His most famous photograph, titled Afghan Girl (shown here) was featured on the cover of National Geographic in 1985. His work has also appeared in recent National Geographic articles on Tibet, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and the temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia. This exhibition includes a special section dedicated to McCurry’s photographs of Italy, mostly shot in the past year.
MACRO Testaccio,  Piazza Orazio Giustianiani 
Tuesday – Sunday  4-10 pm; through April 29

Ombre di Guerra (Shadows of War)
Ninety memorable, award-winning shots by photographers such as Capa, Salgado, Pellegrin  and others, illustrate the faces of war, from Spain in 1936 to Afghanistan in 2007. The initiative is part of Science for Peace, an international project launched by Umberto Veronesi, whose purpose is scientific research and practical solutions for peace. Georges Mérillon’s image, shown here, strikingly reminsicent of a 16th century painting, captures the extraordinary narrative of human suffering.
Museo Ara Pacis, Lungotevere Augusta (Piazza Augusto Imperatore)
Tuesday – Sunday, 9 am – 7 pm;  through February tel 06 205 9127

 

I Borghese e l’antico (The Borghese and the Ancients)
Important masterpieces of ancient art, once part of the Borghese Collection, now the core collection of antiquities at the Louvre Museum. The 60 works on view include pieces that return to Rome after an absence of  200 years, such as the famous Borghese vase with Dionysian scenes, the Sleeping Hermaphrodite restored by a young Bernini, the child Silenus and Bacchus, the Three Graces and the famous Centaur Ridden by Love.
Galleria Borghese  Piazzale Scipone Borghese 5 (Villa Borghese)
Tuesday – Sunday, 9 am – 7 pm; through April 9

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EXHIBITIONS AT MAXXI
Rome’s new contemporary museum, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, designed by acclaimed architect Zada Hadid, is the first museum in Italy devoted to contemporary creativity in the arts.
MAXXI – Museo Delle Arti Del XXI Secolo, Via Guido Reni 6 (Flaminio)
Tuesday – Wedneday and Friday -Sunday, 11 am – 7 pm; Thursday, 11 am – 10 pm; tel 06 321 0181


The Otolith Group
Thoughtform, the first exhibition in Italy devoted to the London-based group founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshunco, draws from the archives of the past century in order to achieve new ways of interpreting and presenting facts and events overlooked by recent history. The show aims to delve into the artist-led collective’s methodology.
The installation can be seen as a set presenting the images and sounds of the collective's films, surrounded by a large series of materials that contextualize the pieces into their creative process.
MAXXI will present a selection of their key works and the final version of the second part of their recent trilogy, Hydra Decapita. Sponsored by MAXXI and MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona.
through February 5

Ludovico Quaroni. Disegni e schezzi per le Barene di San Giuliano a Mestre
(Drawings and sketches for Barene di San Giuliano, Mestre)
A retrospective exhibition celebrating the centennial of the birth of Ludovico Quaroni (Rome, 1911 - Rome, 1987), who was one of the leading architects and planners of the second half of the 20th century. The exhibition features a number of drawings for the architectural competition project of the Barene di San Giuliano quarter in Mestre (a residential and commercial zone and suburb of Venice) and a selection of materials from the Ludovico Quaroni Collection of the Fondazione Adriano Olivetti.
A one-day workshop presenting the Quaroni Collection and project plans is scheduled in coordination with the inaugural celebration.
through February 26

Pieter Hugo. Permanent Error
A harrowing portrait of Agbogbloshie, a shanty town in Ghana and one of the world’s largest hi-tech dumps, where computers, monitors and motherboards are burned to retrieve copper, brass, aluminum and zinc, producing toxic residues that contaminate the air, water, land and populace. Comprised of 28 photographs, these images of an urban inferno capture a surreal narrative in which figures wander amid bonfires and piles of electronic waste while cattle and oxen placidly graze in the toxic miasmas of what was once a bucolic countryside.
through April 29

Re-cycle.  Strategie per l’architettura, città e il pianeta
A major exhibition devoted to projects involving recycling strategies in architecture, cities and landscapes, together with works by artists, photographers and media producers. Drawings, models, videos, photographs, writings and other materials compose a contemporary map of recycling, demonstrating how ideas are manifested  into strategies for architecture, cities and the planet.
The exhibition aims to show that recycling can act as a stimulus for creative innovation.
through April 29

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Luoghi, figure, nature morte
Opere della Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale.
(Places, figures and still life)  
Rome’s Municipal Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art was one of the first in Italy to acquire works, beginning its acquisition program in 1883 with the purchase of 40 water-colors by Ettore Roesler Franz and a few historical and generic works from the Universal Exhibition. By 1925 purchases had grown to 200 works, consisting of paintings, sculptures, and graphics. Today, the collection includes works that represent the most significant moments in Italian art from the late 19th century to the Second World War, estimated at more than 4,000 pieces, including works exhibited and those in storage. Now inaugurating a newly restored exhibition space, the museum showcases works by Vincenzo Gemito, Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Giacomo Balla, Tato, Francesco Depero, Giovanni Costa, Giorgio Morandi, Filippo De Pisis, Francesco Trombadori, Gino B. Scipione, Felice Casorati, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Giorgio De Chirico, C. Carrà, Mario Mafai, Renato Guttuso, Afro, and Alberto Savinio and Gino Severini who’s work is shown here.
Galleria D’Arte Moderna Di Roma Capitale,  Via Francesco Crispi 24
(Piazza Barberini – Piazza di Spagna)
Tuesday – Sunday, 10 am – 6 pm; through April 15

Roma al Tempo di Caravaggio
(Rome at the time of Caravaggio)  
Not an exhibition of works by Caravaggio, but rather, a show that aims to answer the question, “Who were Caravaggio’s companions?” by bringing together  for the first time, 140 paintings on loan from major Italian and foreign museums, which trace the influences of Annibale Caracci and Carvaggio, who were contemporaries, on such artists as Lanfranco, Guido Reni, Gentileschi and Domenichino, as well as artists outside Italy, such as Ribera and Rubens. These works examine the connective tissue of the artistic panorama of the Eternal City where Caravaggio lived and worked.
Palazzo Venezia, via Plebecito 118 (Piazza Venezia)
Tuesday – Sunday, 10 am – 7 pm; through February 5
Also at this museum:

Moreno Bondi – La luce e l’ombra di Caravaggio nel contemporaneo
The Italian artist presents a selection of 32 works on canvas in large and small format. Bondi aims to apply characteristics of Baroque painting and sculpture in a contemporary context.
through February 5

 

Il Vello d'Oro: antichi tesori della Georgia
(The Golden Fleece: ancient treasures from Georgia)
Inspired by the legend of the Argonauts, the exhibition showcases artifacts dating from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., which were found during archaeological excavations at Vani, the Pompei of Colchideu. During this period, the city had reached the height of its wealth and splendor. Through a selection of precious objects, the exhibition traces the ties that bound Mediterranean mythology to Greco-Roman culture.
Mercati Di Trainao – Museo dei Fori Imperiali  Via IV Novembre 94
Tuesday – Sunday 9 am – 7 pm; through February 5

Leonardo e Michelangelo. Capolavori della grafica e studi romani 
A selection of 66 drawings by two great masters of the Italian Renaissance — Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti — aims to compare the drawing styles and subject matter of the two artists. The exhibition presents graphic masterpieces from the collection of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan (Leonardo) and from the Casa Buonarroti Foundation in Florence (Michelangelo). Artworks and documentation from both collections disclose significant facts about the life, work and passions of the two masters. The exhibition is divided into four sections. The first, “Capolavori tra Capolavori”, provides an overview of works by both artists, who were often considered “rivals”, when in reality, they sought to learn from one another and had great admiration for each other’s artistic contributions and accomplishments.
Nine masterpieces by Leonardo document his mechanical inventions, as well as his interest in military art and architecture, hydraulics, geometry and flight mechanics, providing a comprehensive overview of his research. These pieces are counterbalanced by nine popular drawings from the Casa Buonarroti collection, such as “Study for a Nude” for the “Battle of Cascina”, the enigmatic “Cleopatra” and the “Head of Leda” (perhaps one of the most interesting portraits in Michelangelo’s portfolio of drawings). The section titled, “Appunti su Roma e studi romani di Leonardo” (Notes on Rome and Roman studies ) is dedicated to Leonardo’s sojourn in Rome, with additional expository space displaying “Love for the “Old” and “Architecture”,  his interest in “Mirrors, Optics and Geometry” and  “Figure Drawing”. A separate section is dedicated to exploring the following categories of Michelangelo’s work: “Michelangelo: Utopia and practice”, “Michelangelo anatomist” and “Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel and the Pauline Chapel.”
Works by artists who were trained in workshops of Leonardo and Michelangelo are also featured in the exhibition.
Musei Capitolini , Piazza del Campidoglio 1
Tuesday – Sunday 9 am – 8 pm; through February 19

 

The International Biennial of Culture: The Silk Roads
A series of 11 exhibitions dedicated to countries of the Middle and Far East (Armenia, China, South Korea, Georgia, India, Indonesia and Turkey) located along the ancient caravan roads from the third century B.C. to the 13th century AD. The biennial event is developed around eleven historical, artistic, and archaeological exhibitions, along with conferences and other events.  The festival, running from October 2011 to February 2012, will be held in  a variety of venues around Rome: the Museum of the Imperial Forums at Trajan’s Market, the Museo di Roma Palazzo Braschi, the Museo di Roma Trastevere, the Macro Future Museum, and the Baths of Diocletian, where two pavilions will re-open to the public especially for this occasion.

A Oriente. Città, uomini e Dei sulle Vie dlla Seta (Cities, men and gods on the Silk Road)
 The Baths of Diocletian hosts the opening exhibition. Inspired by a 30-meter long, early 16th century Chinese map recently found in Japan, the exhibition traces the overlapping cultures and religions along the Silk Roads. Sponsored by the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient.
Luci cinesi (Chinese lights) 1980/2010
Curated by Enrico Rondoni, this exhibition traces the evolution of the People’s Republic of China over the last 30 years. More than 100 photographs in black-and-white and color offer a survey of China’s complex transformation and daily cultural life. Rondoni's documentation of China began in 1981 and ended in Tibet in 2010.
Museo Nazionale Romano - Terme Di Diocleziano,  Viale Enrico De Nicola 79 
(Piazza della Repubblica) 
Tuesday – Sunday, 9 am – 7:45 pm; through February 26


Rinascimento a Roma. Nel segno di Michelangelo e Raffaello 
The exhibition investigates for the first time the artistic, architectural and papal influences behind aspects of 16th century urban planning in Rome, which was set in motion during the reign of Pope Julius II (1503-1513), and which continued under other popes, enduring until the death of Michelangelo in 1564, one year after the Council of Trent (1563).
Curated by Maria Grazia Bernardini and Marco Bussagli, the exhibition is comprised of more than 170 works in painting, drawing, sculpture, engraving and medallions. The show's seven sections trace the artistic course of the 16th century through its transition from the extraordinary and masterly skill of the high Renaissance, imbued with the iconography of classical culture, to an art strongly influenced and empowered by a new and enthralling spirituality, in a period marked by the convergence of political and religious affairs, which reverberated throughout the continent and England. Rome, which had been devastated in 1527 by the invasion of Charles V,  demonstrated remarkable resilience, unrelenting in its powerful leadership in governance and the arts.
Works gathered for this exhibition are on loan from the Vatican Museum, the Uffizi Gallery, the Bargello National Museum in Florence, Capodimonte Naples, L’Hermitage Saint Petersburg, and museums in London, Vienna and Buffalo, New York.
Museo Fondazione Roma – Palazzo Sciarra Colonna, Via Marco Minghetti 22 (off Via del Corso near the Trevi Fountain) 
Tuesday – Sunday, 10 am – 8pm; through February 12

Gio Ponti – Il fascino della ceramica
An exhibition of more than 100 works celebrates Gio Ponti (Milan, 1891 -1979) one of the foremost masters of Italian architecture and design. The exhibition is specifically dedicated to his work as a designer and his production of ceramics and majolica, designed for Richard Ginori between 1923 and 1930. Ponti’s career spanned some 70 years during which he worked in architecture, industrial design, crafts and art in search of links between architecture and the other arts, writing for the magazine Domus, which he founded, as well as the publication Stile, and creating the first Triennale exhibition in Milan in 1933. The works are on loan from public and private collections. The exhibition travels to Rome from Palazzo Pirelli (Milan), the skyscraper designed by Gio Ponti 50 years ago.
Casino Dei Principi, Villa Torlonia, Via Nomentana
Tuesday – Sunday, 9 am – 7 pm; through February

Icone Russe (XV-XX secolo)
Over 40 religious icons on loan from the Museo delle Icone Russe di Mosca represent the exceptional historical and artistic value in this art form that reaches back stylistically to arts produced in antiquity. The exhibition aims to reveal the elegance of Russian icons produced from the last decades of the 15th century up to the 20th century.
Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo, Lngotevere Castello di Sant'Angelo 50
Tuesday – Sunday, 9 am – 7 pm; through February 12

 

 

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EXHIBITIONS at MACRO
Museo D’Arte Contemporanea, Di Roma Viale Nizza angolo Via Cagliari (near Piazza Fiume)
Tuesday – Sunday, 11 am – 10 pm; tel 06 671 070400

Enel Contemporanea Award 2011:
Carsten Holler – Double Carousel with Zollner Stripes
German artist (Brussels-born-Stockholm-based) Carsten Höller is this year’s winner of the Enel Contemporanea Award. His work, “Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes” is based on the well-known amusement park ride.  Holler’s is a structure of two carousels, altered to move at an extremely slow pace in different directions. The slow-motion speed allows the visitors to get on and off the ride, while their environment is altered through reflections and optical illusions. Mirrors mounted on MDF panels, re-cast flickers from the light bulbs, and in some cases, the geographic patterns silhouetted onto the surrounding walls. The experimental nature of the art stems from Höller’s  scientific background. A former entomologist, he  who now experiments on human viewers instead of bugs. Many of his works deal with the senses as the visitors become part of quasi-scientific experiments. 
 A single carousel is also currently on display at the New Museum New York, in a retrospective exhibition entitled 'Experience'.   Carsten Holler’s work is in the collection of prestigious museum’s and cultural institutions worldwide.
through February 26


GALLERIES

Juliana Cerqueira-Leite – Precede / Proceed. Sculpture and body drawings
The body is both the creator and subject of Juliana Cerqueira-Leite’s work. The artist employs three media during the process of creating a piece, actively engaging her own body. She begins each sculpture or canvas by literally throwing herself into it – burrowing through huge blocks of clay, pouring plaster repeatedly over her body, and manipulating her paint-covered body over canvas panels. The physical process leaves traces of the motion, dimensions, physical limitations and extremities of her body, and from these beginnings she makes her drawings, and her sculptures with metal, latex, wood and plaster.
Juliana Cerqueira-Leite (1981) born in São Paulo, Brazil, lives in New York. She completed her studies at London’s Slade School of Fine Art and at the Camberwell College of Art. She has since exhibited her work internationally, most recently with shows in Lithuania, California and London, and was included in the Newspeak exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery 2010. She is recipient of the 2006 Kenneth Armitage Sculpture Prize and the 2010-11 A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship. She has curated a number of exhibitions, including Physical Centre, a two month-project in performance, film and lectures at Guest Projects, London in 2011.
Galleria Lorcan O’Neill  Via Degli Orti D’Alibert 1e  (Trastevere)
Monday – Friday, 12 – 8 pm and Saturday, 2-8 pm; through February 24  tel 06 688 92980

Damien Hirst - The Complete Spot Paintings, 1986-2011
Conceived as a single exhibition for multiple locations, the event opens simultaneously worldwide at all of Gagosian Gallery’s eleven locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong. One  hundred and fifty works loaned from private collections and public institutions from 20  countries make use of this international reach to determine the content of each exhibition according to location.
Hirst’s spot paintings are among the most distinctive in contemporary art, a symbol that is recognized universally as cutting across boundaries of culture and language. Beginning with the first spot painting created in 1986, to monumental canvases where no single color is ever repeated, to the most recent works, some of which comprise spots of just 1 milometer in diameter, this exhibition resonates Hirst’s “world of spots” in a global context. The Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011” precedes the first major museum retrospective of Hirst’s work, scheduled to open at the Tate Modern in London, April, 2012.
Damien Hirst was born in Bristol, England (1965 - ). Solo exhibitions include "The Agony and the Ecstasy," Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples (2004); "A Selection of Works by Damien Hirst from Various Collections," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2005); Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2005); "For the Love of God," Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2008); "No Love Lost," The Wallace Collection, London (2009); "Requiem," Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev (2009); and “Cornucopia,” the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco (2010). He received the Turner Prize in 1995. His work is included in important public and private collections throughout the world.
Gagosian Gallery,  Via Francesco Crispi 16  Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 7 pm;
through March 10 tel 06 420  86498

Falling in Line
Showing for the first time in Rome, Israeli artists Hilla Ben Ari and Maya Attoun integrate their visual processes in an installation entitled, "About Paper: Israeli Contemporary Art", curated by Giorgia Calò.  Conceived specifically for the gallery's exhibition space, the work demonstrates the artists’ shared interest in grids and linear forms. The combined effect of lines crossing and zigzagging through imaginary or real grids and textures, generates intermittent movements that are intended to cause tension between a rational sense of order and a more introspective, chance-driven tendency. The exhibition’s title also reveals a phonetic similarity to the expression "Falling in Love", thus introducing another theme associated with their work, the inextricable relationship between physical and emotional oscillation.  
In separate exhibitions spaces, Maya Attoun shows a series of installations involving various media such as sculpture, found objects, wallpaper and sound. Each work combines visual themes, scientific notions, mostly invoking neo-Gothic references. Ben Ari shows a selection of paper works and a large scale wall piece depicting three female figures connected to each other by a woven texture, formed by paper stripes and yarns.
The show also features the video work "Dusk", currently displayed also in the group exhibition "Curators and Co." at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Israel.
Galleria Marie-Laure Fleisch,  Vicolo Sforza Cesarini 3a  (Piazza del Orologio)
Monday - Saturday, 2-8 pm; through February 25

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In Rome Now Travel Guide: Rome, Italy Museums and Art Galleries