MAXXI - National Museum of Art of the 21st Century

GNAM - National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art

ICCD - Istituto Centrale Catalogo Documentazione

Franco Angeli Archive

Elisabetta Catalano Archive

Sightseeing

About Me

Rome and Back Again

Francesca's Journey Through the Artists' Archives of Rome and New York

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

Reflections on Rauschenberg

A common thread throughout artist archives that I am particularly interested in is the function of the artist's legacy on the ways in which their heirs and/or the foundations that keep their works manage their materials. There are so many little decisions that archivists face when managing such an extensive collection of often deeply personal materials. The staff at the Rauschenberg think carefully about what Rauschenberg himself would have done, his intention behind his collection, and how he viewed his own art when making any processing decisions. I think this careful consideration and allegiance to his vision is a great example of archival practice under the critical framework of artistic legacy.

MAXXI - National Museum of Art of the 21st Century

Monday March 11, 2024

The MAXXI is the national museum of contemporary art and architecture and its art archive, overseen by Giulia Pedace, opened specially for us on our first day in Rome. The art archives of MAXXI consist of the papers, photographs, videotaped performances, and artist books of modern and contemporary Italian artists which they most typically receive by either donation or acquisition. The archives at MAXXI are user-focused and 9 of their fonds are open to the public for access and research while even their processing decisions and series-level descriptions are made with usability by the public in mind.

sculpture at the public entrance

view from the first floor galleries

the exterior of the building, designed by Zaha Hadid in 2010

opening presentation slide by Giulia Pedace

The MAXXI archive does what American archivists first called "Performing the Archive" and creates exhibitions based on the contents of their archive to spread awareness of what MAXXI archives hold and to celebrate the artists' works in new and dynamic ways. While they were between shows during our visit so we were unable to see an exhibition ourselves, Giulia Pedace gave us a thorough presentation of some of their best known shows in the past. Past exhibitions have included the works of famous performance art photographers such as Elisabetta Catalano which used mounted light boxes to more vividly display contact sheets and film; musical artists whose work was presented via headphones in stations around the galleries; and the works of multimedia artists such as Pedro Reyes who used scrap metal from weaponry to create musical instruments used in a concert performed in the MAXXI galleries at the opening night of his exhibition.

Pratt students viewing artist books with MAXXI archivist Giulia Capelletti

Warhol lithography of an invitation to a Leo Castelli gallery opening

view ascending the stairs to the second floor of MAXXI

GNAM - National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art

walking up to the public entrance to GNAM

first floor gallery

Pratt students admiring a work in a first floor gallery

March 12, 2024

The Galleria Nazionale D'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art) hosted us on our second full day in Rome. They welcomed us to tour the galleries and held a presentation of their collection down in their institutional archives. Because the GNAM is a larger institution than MAXXI with far more materials and a longer institutional collecting history, their staff consists of 4 people (3 full time staff and 1 intern). For scale, while MAXXI has approximately 2,000 items in their archive, GNAM (with more than a century more of an institutional existence) has approximately 56,000 items. Their collections can be divided into two categories: a bio-iconographical archive and an archive of artists and critics. The bio-iconographical archive contains materials related to gallery history, the history of contemporary art in Italy and is currently around 300m in extent, where it will likely remain. The GNAM archive on artists and critics contains correspondences between artists and their individual archives and while currently has an extent of 300m, is predicted to reach 600m in the near future. GNAM is actively digitizing their archive so as to become web searchable.

fashion portraits from the GNAM archive

portrait of Igor Stravinsky

GNAM archivist displaying an artist's personal drawings from their archive

selections from the GNAM collection presented for us on our visit

Patuelli and the GNAM archive

The collections of the GNAM consisted of many of the same types of materials as we had seen in previous archival visits. There were photographic prints, artist books of well known designers, pop-up books, personal letters between artists and their contemporaries, and the personal sketches, studies, and notebooks of famous Italian artists of recent history. An insteresting policy of the GNAM archives was that they do not collect CDs, digital materials or any type of new media. They focus entirely on analog and print materials. They will collect audio tapes of relevant artists, but will outsource them to be interpreted and digitized. Many of the artist archives they they house in their collection are received through donation or bequest by the artist themselves or their family. Often, the original order of the archive is kept upon receipt to better adhere to the artist's own vision of how their work ought to be organized, but will often reorganize to adhere to intelletual order if there is no apparent organizing schema. They organize their correspondence series alphabetically, but otherwise group their series by theme. They have no explicit weeding policies, but will keep certain kinds of materials, such as medical records, sensitive information, etc. out of public accessibility.

librarian showing Pratt students the old card catalog system

librarian showing the original registry book for the GNAM library in the late 19th C

full view of GNAM's facade

The Library at GNAM was the only library we visited as a class during our week in Rome and it held an incredible collection of artist books and historical records from the institution's history. They hold over 100,000 volumes and is considered a library of applied arts. Established in 1883 after the unification of Italy, GNAM and the library were founded together but only opened to the public in 1945. In 1980, with the rise of professional titles of archivist and librarian, the GNAM library sought to create a standardized cataloging system. ICCD (Istituto Centrale Catalogo Documentazione) developed a localized schema for the GNAM library that contains a description, subclass, and year. It is not a lending library and is only open for research appointments.

ICCD - Istituto Centrale Catalogo Documentazione

morning walk along the Tiber

ICCD front gallery

crossing a busy street

enjoying the sunshine

March 13, 2024

The Istituto Centrale Catalogo Documentazione (Central Institute for Cataloging and Documentation) was founded in 1880 after the unification of Italy as an organization dedicated to the preservation and capture of cultural heritage institutions across the country. Primarily an institute of photographic documentation, the ICCD consists of professional photographers and archivists who manage their vast collections of photographs and travel albums. The photographers of the ICCD were instrumental in establishing a brand for Italy as a travel destination of beauty, history, and relaxation in the 20th century. Their mission is to present their collection in new and fresh interpretations so as to continue to receive funding and support from the government and from the public. Their primary form of outreach is through artist residencies.

exhibition catalog

photographic prints

Francesca Fabiani

instruction from ICCD archivist

exhibition catalog

ICCD courtyard

The photographic exhibitions that displayed the work of the artists in residence often portrayed photography as an art form and as a means of documentation in a reinvented light. They often captured new perspectives on Italian history or reinvented damaged photographs into otherworldly light displays. Paulo Ventura, for example, created realistic dioramas and posed sitters to create a false history of the Italian civil war, based on the photographic tradition of the American civil war. Using historically accurate costumes, fake blood, and props, he fabricated an entire narrative of Italian history in the immediacy of the photographic medium. My personal favorite was the work of Joan Fontcuberta who used landscape photographs that had been damaged by mites or mold infestations and displayed them in a lightbox to create an ever-changing, almost galactic scene. Others dealt with Italian social issues such as the negative environmental impacts of mafia criminal activity along the Italian coast, the censored letters of WWI soldiers, or the preservation of UNESCO sites across Italy.

Franco Angeli Archive

March 14, 2024

The Franco Angeli archive was founded in 2009 by Maria Angeli, daughter of Franco Angeli. Franco Angeli is best known for his serial paintings and strong use of symbolism. He was politically active in the mid 20th century and many of his works contain iconic political symbols such as the stars and stripes, the swastika, the hammer and sickle, and the Roman imperial eagle. His pieces represent the idea of power in a post-war western world and the iconographic motifs were often replicated through forgeries. Maria dedicated the first five years of operation to clearing the market of hundreds of fakes made throughout the 80s and 90s and re-buying the authentic works of her father's that she could find. Her work now consists of cataloging and documenting his archive of personal papers and the few pieces she has been able to collect. Her father sold his paintings for income, so her family did not have a large collection of its own when she first began archiving his work. She and the other employee of the archive perform provenance research to establish the legitimacy of paintings at market, catalog the paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, artist books, and personal items that make up the archive. They use an internal cataloging system that does not follow the standards of ISAD(G), sorting materials by medium and in chronological order. Additionally, the archive holds a number of digitized video material available online, and is actively looking to digitize the entire collection.

I was interested in this archive visit as an prime example of artistic legacy. In the case of the Angeli archive, Franco Angeli's own daughter and heir is the chief archivist of his collection and is able to make decisions based on her knowledge and relationship with her father, the artist. Institutions like MAXXI, GNAM, or ICCD are often far removed from the artistic process and the personality or lives of the artists. Having the familial relationship between archivist and artist allows for a truer application of an artist's vision towards the posthumous management of their archive.

door to the Franco Angeli archive

courtyard outside the Angeli archive

Elisabetta Catalano Archive

Cesare Tacchi contact sheets by EC

EC's Italian fashion portraits

materials from the archive

March 15, 2024

For our final archives visit of our week in Rome, we visited the Elisabetta Catalano archives. Catalano was a photographer who primarily did portraits of actors and actresses, performance artists, and fashion icons. She got her career start as an actress in Fellini movies and later established her own studio where she was active from the 1960s until 2015. Her portraiture often made political statements, based on who and where she chose to photograph. Many of her subjects were well known contemporary artists whose work we had seen earlier in the week at GNAM and MAXXI, such as Cesare Tacchi, Joseph Beuys, Fabio Mauri, etc. She was well known for her photography of performance pieces Her archive consists of mostly analog contact sheets, artist books, exhibition catalogs, and printed photographs. Over 14,000 of the photographs have been digitized and are held in digital repositories, but the entire archive functions under an analogic organization. The archivists were able to inherit her own system of organization, which was alphabetically sorted by subjects' name (of which there are over 2,000). The archivists at the Catalano archive, like nearly every other museum/archive we visited during this week, used a customized version of Filemaker Pro and used an internal list of name authorities.

Patuelli in conversation with EC's husband

Like the Franco Angeli archive, the Elisabetta Catalano archive had a direct familial connection to the artist in the form of a family member on staff. Pictured here, her husband is directly involved with the management of her legacy through his own career as an archivist.

In addition to the work of the archivists in cataloging and documenting the work of Elisabetta Catalano, the archive is home to a feminist magazine digitization project, with a focus on female photographers, funded by universities in Bologna and Rome. The end result will be a study tool for anyone studying Italian photographers. They are digitizing magazines using the equipment pictured right and cross referencing any names of photographers mentioned in the articles. The scholars working on this projects are art historians seeking to rectify the colonial approach of academia. Since so many female photographers quit their work due to prejudice, this projects seeks to give voice to their work and achieve recognized.

taking notes in the garden

digitization equipment

Sightseeing

Borghese gardens

Art

Like many of my classmates, I am interested in art archives because of my interest in art and art history. My undergraduate degree focused on the art of medieval and Renaissance Europe, so seeing all the art in Rome was one of my favorite ways to spend our free afternoons. We toured the Vatican museums and the Sistine chapel complex, seeing frescoes by Michelangelo and Raphael, with unexpected pieces by Picasso, Dali, and Matisse. We saw ancient works such as the column of Trajan or Laocoon and Sons. Some of my personal favorites were the artworks within churches such as Caravaggio's Calling of St. Matthew, or Michelangelo's Pieta. I have a particular interest in Michelangelo, so I was thrilled to be able to visit so many of his most famous pieces from the ceiling and altar walls of the Sistine Chapel, his Pieta, and his design for the Piazza Campidoglio.

History

In addition to the beautiful art all around Rome, I thoroughly enjoyed the historical elements throughout the city. My undergraduate degree was a dual focus in history and art history and I became interested in art through my interest in history. I enjoyed just walking through the city and finding ruins of ancient temples, marketplaces, and governmental buildings beneath the sidewalk or towering above me. I had learned a lot about ancient Rome (as I think we all do) in school and I learned more about Roman culture through my high school Latin classes, but I was excited to learn more about more modern Italian history through some of our site visits, specifically post-unification Italian history. I also loved snapping pictures at all the classic tourist spots and keeping on traditions like tossing a coin over my shoulder into the Trevi Fountain, visiting the Pantheon and the Colosseum, and walking up the Spanish Steps.

Churches

I was continuously impressed by the beauty of the churches in Rome. So many of them were full of gorgeous art and architecture, often with iconic artists like Caravaggio hanging in obscure corners. It almost seemed like every street I passed had at least a dozen churches on it, all with incredibly elaborate facades and opulent interiors. I think the most interesting one I visited was St. Maria of Cosmedin, by the Forum. It was built in 1123, before the schism between the eastern and western catholic churches, and was incredibly old. The skull of St. Valentine (patron of Valentine's Day) was on display in a niche and there was even a small gift shop near the exit. Another of my favorite church visits was to the Church of the Gesu to see the famous Baroque ceiling by Il Baciccia.

Vatican

As a Catholic myself, I could not visit Rome without a little pilgrimage to the Vatican. I was lucky enough to attend a morning mass on Friday inside St. Peter's Basilica and even received a blessing on a rosary I had purchased the day before. So much of Church history is intertwined with that of Rome that it was hard not to see bits and pieces of Catholic life and history all over the city.

Food

I had so many delicious meals while in Rome, it's hard to pick out my favorite. I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but after a few days of a lot of walking and jetlagged sleep, I began drinking a cappuccino with my breakfasts, which was a delicious way to start the day. I enjoying finding new places to try gelato, cookies, and tiramisu between and after meals. A friend recommended Giolitti which serves both gelato and pastries and I went twice during our week in Rome. My family is southern Italian and so many of the dishes and cookies I grew up eating were slightly more Americanized versions of the ones I ate during this week. (The amatriciana I ate on the third day tasted exactly like my grandmother's Sunday sauce.)

Shopping

Another one of my favorite activities in our free afternoons was shopping at the local flea markets and specialty shops around Rome. There were so many outdoor markets selling food, flowers, clothes, and vintage items for pretty low prices. I also enjoyed shopping for leather items, which when compared to New York City prices, were relatively inexpensive for how high quality they were. By far one of my favorite places to look around in was a rare and antique book store near the Pantheon. So many of the books were early editions, costing hundreds of euros each, and the store manager followed us around and handled them for us before we were allowed to touch them.

About Me

Hi! My name is Francesca and this page serves as my digital journal for INFO 697 Artists' Archives: Rome/New York. Here you will find my pictures and reflections from our site visits to both New York and Roman archives, as well as my favorite sightseeing experiences from our time in Rome. Ciao!