The inauguration of the Maxxi L’Aquila is a way to concretely demonstrate that the state does not forget this city, even if the spotlight has gone out. Indeed, we must go forward with commitment and determination as happened here, where the absolute quality of restoration is combined with contemporary art, giving life to a new museum that is born from the central Maxxi, a bit like what happened with the Louvre with its other locations. Dario Franceschini, Minister of Culture, speaks in the center of Piazza Santa Maria Paganica, a crossroads of contrasts in L’Aquila since May 28. On the one hand, the restoration of the eighteenth-century Ardinghelli-Maxxi L’Aquila palace, objectively magnificent for the clarity and elegance of the external and internal spaces meticulously restored to their exquisite beauty, now made available for the inaugural exhibition (Point of equilibrium. Thought space light from Toyo Ito to Ettore Spalletti, edited by Margherita Guccione and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi). On the other hand, the building site of Santa Maria Paganica, uncovered by the earthquake of 2009, semi-destroyed without an operational project.
The operation Ardinghelli-Maxxi palace L’Aquila thus becomes the symbol of resilience and restart after the earthquake and also after the Covid emergency, as said by the president of the Maxxi Foundation, Giovanna Melandri, who recalled Franceschini’s initial intuition in 2014: Bringing a contemporary pole to a jewel of the Italian Baroque and in the heart of a wounded city. It was an institutional call to which we responded with responsibility and honor. It is inevitable to rethink Mario Draghi’s settlement speech: Italy a great economic and cultural power.
Other symbols, again indicated by Melandri: politically transversal continuity funding and convinced support for Maxxi L’Aquila between changes of national and regional governments, changes to the Municipality of L’Aquila. And then the 7 million euros insured by Russia as support for the rebirth of the city (the presence of Ambassador Sergey Razov is significant). So, as the general secretary of Maxxi, Pietro Barrera, says, with this result it is right to be optimistic: on the restart, on the recovery, on the future.
The frame of the dazzling operation for the whiteness of the facade of one of the greatest examples of the Baroque of L’Aquila, built in the first half of the eighteenth century for the Medici family of tax collectors, ennobled but suddenly extinct. The building experienced seasons of neglect and end uses for public offices. Then the 2009 earthquake: the photos show heaps of rubble. Today the large interior spaces appear perfect: the spectacular monumental fireplaces, the allegorical frescoes found, the views over the city, the plaster reproduced in their handcrafted integrity.
The itinerary of Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Margherita Guccione multiple. First of all, a group of works created for Maxxi L’Aquila and commissioned for the place, that is site specific (Elisabetta Benassi, Daniela De Lorenzo, Alberto Garutti, Nunzio and Ettore Spalletti). Symbol between the symbols la Column in the void, by Ettore Spalletti, a great Abruzzo artist who died in 2019: the exhibition is dedicated to him. A white column pointing towards infinity located in the center of the small chapel of the building with a baroque micro-dome and lantern. A reference both to the rigor of the more classical Renaissance (and, at the same time, to the Baroque of the building) and to the destructive contemporaneity of the earthquake. Nunzio signs a Without title with suspended boards in burnt wood, almost stripped. There is also the Russian artist Anastasia Potemkina with her installation Untitled: he uprooted among the ruins and made grow, in a hydroponic cultivation, a small weed very present in L’Aquila, a senecio.
But the works requested of artists today confront and dialogue with many pieces of the Maxxi collections that seem to find a different life and meaning here, even renewed. There is the magnificent main hall of the palace, that of the Aviary, dedicated to William Kentridge’s tapestries, starting with the famous North Pole Map, declined on colonialism, immigration, economic disparity in the global reality. Here are the sewn pages of Maria Lai, a Mimetic by Alighiero Boetti from 1968 close to The city rises proposed today by Elisabetta Benassi, a memory deposit (words of the artist), two blocks of city-shaped rooms.
Another important piece of the itinerary concerns architecture and photography. There is the project Aquila by Stefano Cerio (between reality and fiction, with the inflatables placed, as in a dream, in Campo Felice or Campo Imperatore) and the other, L’Aquila, by Paolo Pellegrin, with the polyptych of 140 shots on the wounds of the city. Then the historical models de The compact city by the urban planners Franco Purini and Laura Thermes, the two models by Toyo Ito, le model of The Space City of Jonah Friedman.
Minister Franceschini (Pd) and the mayor of L’Aquila, Pierluigi Biondi (FdI) they agreed on a table to imagine together an itinerary for the restoration of Santa Maria Paganica perhaps (idea by Biondi) with an international architecture competition. L’Aquila as a laboratory of politics (im) possible, in the name of our cultural heritage.
The visits start from 3 June
The Maxxi L’Aquila, the new headquarters of the Maxxi National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome, in Palazzo Ardinghelli: visits already sold out from 30 May to 2 June, regular opening to the public from Thursday 3 June (maxxilaquila.art)
May 28, 2021 (change May 28, 2021 | 20:46)
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