Art Hisory

Andrew Rossi’s 2016 documentary film, The First Monday in May, is ostensibly about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s extravagant black-tie gala, held every spring to inaugurate the Costume Institute’s annual blockbuster exhibition. This star-studded media event has become both a financial boon to the Met – raking in over $12.5 million for the Costume Institute, or its entire yearly operating budget – as well as a staple on fashion and celebrity calendars. The film offers a classic ‘front stage’ and ‘backstage’ glimpse into preparations for the event, following a cast of well-known characters from the fashion industry – including, among others, Vogue editor-in-chief and host of the gala, Anna Wintour – as they prepare the red carpet event, while turning its lens in equal measure to the decidedly less glamorous backstage job of preparing the exhibition itself, documenting white-coated assistants performing the mundane tasks mannequin dressing, installation and conservation. Amid the lushly filmed celebrity cameos, however, a more interesting, if overlooked portrait undergirds the film. This subplot focuses on the day-to-day activities of Andrew Bolton, the soft-spoken Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, as he researches and prepares the 2015 exhibition, China: Through the Looking Glass.

AVVERTENZA: Sulla base della normativa in materia di diritti d’autore, oltre che di una norma etica fondamentale, non è concesso utilizzare questo testo illustrato in qualsiasi forma – copia, citazione, riassunto etc. – senza menzionare la fonte.

WARNING: Under copyright law, as well as a fundamental norm of ethics, any use of this published paper – copy, citation, abridged version etc. – is not authorised without mentioning the source.

Art and Gentrification in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape brings together various disciplinary perspectives and diverse theories on art’s dialectical and evolving relationship with urban regeneration processes. It engages in the accumulated discussions on art’s role in gentrification, yet changes the focus to the growing phenomenon of artistic protests and resistance in the gentrified neighborhoods.

Since the 1980s, art and artists’ role​s in gentrification ha​ve been at the forefront of urban geography research in the subjects of housing, regeneration, displacement and new urban planning. In these accounts the artists have been noted to contribute at all stages of gentrification, from triggering it to eventually being displaced by it themselves. The current presence of art in our neoliberal urban space​s illustrates the constant negotiation between power and resistance​. And there is a growing need to recognize art’s shifting and conflicting relationship with gentrification. The chapters presented here share a common thesis that the aesthetic reconfiguration of the neoliberal city does not only allow uneven and exclusionary urban redevelopment strategies but also facilitates the growth of anti-gentrification resistance.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history,  visual studies, urban cultures, cultural geography and urban studies as well as contemporary art practitioners and policymakers.

This is a lecture text delivered at School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi on 30 Sept. 2016.
The lecture deals with the conceptual formulation of 'protected ignorance' and a critique of knowledge production process. It draws examples from various filed.

MUGHAL AND SAFAVID ALBUMS
17 September 2014 - 21 February 2015
Museum of Islamic Art, Doha
http://www.mia.org.qa/en/boc/boc-catalogue

This exhibition displays a selection of MIA’s miniature paintings and calligraphic compositions that were once part of Safavid and Mughal-era albums. The term “album” is a translation of the Arabic and Persian word muraqqa’, which denotes an object that has been patched together.

Often used as a metaphor for the patchwork of the heavens or the constellations, or referring to the patched cloak of the wandering dervish, this term encapsulates the sophisticated juxtapositions of calligraphy and painting compiled and bound into volumes between the 15th and 19th century, also called muraqqa,’ the dispersed pages of which are on display here. The culture of connoisseurship and collecting at the royal courts of the early modern Islamic world can be reconstructed in part through an examination of the methods in which these albums were compiled.

The careful selection of calligraphy and illustration, and the connoisseur’s appreciation of the interplay between word and image, colour and composition, and the recognition of the hands of particular artists, sheds a great deal light on the artistic cultures of the Safavid and Mughal courts.

The commissioning and compilation of albums also demonstrates how art reinforced political and cultural legitimacy. The royal collecting practice of compiling albums travelled from the Timurid court in Herat, to Safavid Iran, and then to the Mughals in India, where the British also later adopted the practice of creating albums of paintings. As a result of their importance to the history of Islamic art and their distinguished origins, these dispersed album pages are a valuable part of MIA’s collection.

This paper introduces Count Saverio Marchese (1757-1833) as an intellectual figure and art historian. He is known mostly as a sophisticated art collector, whose collection was the foundation of the Mdina Cathedral Museum. This paper discusses his comments to the manuscript 'Uomini Illustri di Malta' with extensive additions, notes and references, showing that he was very up to date with contemporary research and publications in Europe.

Abandoned windmills were characteristic sight of Çanakkale's architectural landscape during the Ottoman period (Figs. 1‐2). Many of these windmills were functioning until the 1970s, when farmers started to sell their grain to large electric‐powered factories and obtained their ready‐made bread from commercial bakeries following the modernization of agriculture. These abandoned windmills scattered across the landscape of Çanakkale are gradually disappearing from the ethnographic record of the region and becoming archaeological sites represented by a heap of stone rubbles. An examination of the activities took place around these structures may contribute to the reconstruction of region's picture, since they were once an integral part of the Ottoman rural economy at Çanakkale. Despite their important role within the local rural economy, there has been considerable lack of archaeological and ethnographic interest in windmills. This is in part due to the fact that material remains from the recent Ottoman past have often been viewed as irrelevant for archaeological research. Scholars recently started to place special attention upon the historical archaeology of Ottoman Greece. They started to provide us with new ways of looking in reconstructing the regional histories in rural areas that were once part of the Ottoman imperial system (e.g., Davis 1991; Brumfiel 2000). In this manner, this essay aims to underline the economic significance of windmills in reconstructing regional patterns of agricultural exploitation. It must also be taken into the consideration that the use of windmills was rather a recent historical development originating in the medieval period. The data obtained from the surface examinations could be combined with related historical accounts in the Ottoman archives, European travelers' notes, and oral history. It is hoped that this brief study concentrated on windmills could be of great importance to those archaeologists involved in rural site surveys carried out for the purpose of reconstructing the Çanakkale's past rural economy.

AVVERTENZA:
Sulla base della normativa in materia di diritti d’autore e di una norma etica fondamentale, non è consentito pubblicare né utilizzare questo testo inedito in qualsiasi forma - copia, riassunto, citazione etc. -  senza citare adeguatamente la fonte e senza il consenso scritto dell’autrice. 

WARNING:
Under copyright low, and a fundamental norm of ethics, any publication or
use of this unpublished text – copy, citation or abridged version - is not authorised without adequately mentioning the source and without the author’s written authorization.

Roma,  18 marzo 2015 ore 17.00
Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri Palazzo Chigi
Sala Polifonica A. Sordi



Dopo una serie di trasferte nei musei più prestigiosi del mondo (Metropolitan New York , Scuderie del Quirinale Roma, Museo Diocesano Milano) il quadro torna in patria a Palermo e nel 2012,  è  lo studioso e restauratore Giovanni Taormina che  approfondisce l'analisi sulla prestigiosa opera  l'Annunciata,  riuscendo a coinvolgere un'equipe di radiologi, restauratori, chirurghi estetici, cine operatori, insomma tutti trattamenti riservati ad una star senza tempo..