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Above video turned gif, from the Tiber River, where it begins to surround Tiber Island. You should probably imagine that you are standing on a beautiful bridge while you watch this trash thrash around... and then keep reading and scrolling.
One of my first encounters with THE BIRDS of rome.
These little green parrots are Monk Parakeets. They reminded me of a flock of little green birds I've been told reside in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, but have never seen. They are not so green in my only photo of them, to the left, taken the first day of the trip.
I've learned since this spotting, that the green birds in Rome have a similar story as the green birds in Brooklyn, they were originally brought from South America to be house pets and released, some how thriving in parks, trees, and buildings in big cities.
This color green.
You can almost see the parakeet nested in the knot of the tree.
Professor Pattueli, Giulia Pedace, and Sophia Tarin, holding down a map.
An entrance to the Car Park that the map depicts.
Giulia Cappelletti handling Andy Warhol invitation to a show at Leo Castelli Gallery.
Before day one of site visits, I had been in Siena having trouble turning my brain on, only able to make very unserious cultural connections to Shrek. Images making sense of that connection can be found at the bottom of the page.
So when visiting MAXII and meeting the two Giulias, it felt like being given my brain back by two angels.
The image below the writing and the image to the left relate largely to Giulia Cappeletti's presentation. She walked through the museum's handling of the critic Alberto Boatta's Collection which in connection to other materials in the museum's archive partially told the story of Contemporanea. An exhibit that was curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and took place in what in 1973 was the brand-new Villa Borghese parking lot.
At Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, after a short visit to the galleries, we were taken to the basement through the stacks and into a large room that contained the bio-Iconographic and Historic archives of the museum.
Among a vast array of materials that were laid out for us, I am preferencing two. Although I wish I had a picture of a third, which was a theatrical breakup letter written in purple marker. The first in this carousel is a fashion photo that relates to the time of Palma Bucarelli’s direction of the Museum, 1942-1975. While the second is the amazing Depero Futurista, 1927.
The archive is somewhat tucked away and hidden behind a beautiful library, that contains artist's books, periodicals, and other materials that we were also given the opportunity to gaze at. The third carousel image depicts the card catalog, with a unique system designed by ICCD.
One of the library work desks above. They are integrated into the library by way of white steel beams supporting small squares of travertine marble.
Post visiting GNAM, the background image was taken while on a boat in Villa Borghese.
Later that night some classmates went to the Opera, and I was able to capture Calista and Sophia discussing a future visit to see a Caravaggio on the late-night stroll back to the hotel.
Above: A statue with 4 heads located on Ponte Garabaldi. Also on the right at daytime.
Below: A spread of the works of Paolo Ventura, one a recreation of a fallen soldier, his wife playing the part.
Our class’s plans had changed last minute, so when Walking into the cloisters that contained ICCD I was not so sure what we were getting into.
Istituto Centrale per Il Catalogo e La Documentazione, is the full name of ICCD, and it is a government program attached to Italy’s Ministry of Culture. I am reminded of Giulia Pedace, at some point referring to the various acronyms that relate to libraries and archives as “the tower of Babel” which seems apt here.
While ICCD has enormous breadth, we visited solely the Photography department. Francesca Fabiana presented us with an incredible presentation on both the history of the department and their current projects and trajectory.
In the way that it was explained, the department is rooted in the combination of two projects. One being the Photographic Cabinet, which was a photography project that intended to capture a diverse photographic documentation of Italy. This meant the acquisition of both commercial photography, but also the collection and funding of Italian photography whose purpose was entirely to document.
I kept trying to find an American comparison, but as the Photographic Cabinet became a national Project in 1927, I think that Works Progress Administration Photography has at least a similar thread.
An artist that ICCD recently had as a resident works with this question of the difficulties of a photographic archive attempting to tell a heterogeneous national story. We were introduced to the work of Paola Ventura, whose residency focused on the lack of photographic evidence of death within the archive.
Thursday Morning we visited Franco Angeli’s Archive, a small ground-floor loft. We met Maria Angeli, Franco Angeli’s daughter who had inherited the archive and began to provide structure to it in 2009. As well as Sibilla Panerai, the Archivist and Art Historian. They walked us through what some of their work looks like, all aspects of which seem to be a very interesting complicated affair. While Franco Angeli’s work is less known, the market at the time of the archive's founding was bogged down by many fakes. So in the last decade, a large amount of the Archive's work has been to authenticate and register true works and clear the market of fakes.
A large body of Angeli’s work takes the form of paintings of aggressive symbols of power, veiled by a strategic layering of paint. I was very happy to see a work in the flesh while viewing Carla Accardi’s show at Palazzo Esposizioni. My photo to the left is both good and bad, you can see how well the veil of paint works to hide the symbol but you can barely make out the form of a hammer and sickle. Below is a similar style of painting, with full symbol visibility, Particolare di Moneta, taken from the archive’s website.
Both of these were taken at the Palazzo Esposiziona’s display of Carla Accardi’s work. The left is from the 50s and relates more to Accardi’s time with Gruppo Forma, a group of artists who sought to reinvigorate abstraction and form as a Marxist contrast to extravagance. While the piece on the right is from the 70’s around the time that Accardi worked with Carla Lonzi on Rivolta Femminile.
Regarding Rivolta Femminile's Let's Spit On Hegel, I would recommend this reading.
Top image: A folder of contact sheets organized by subject depicted in the photographs, which was mirrored by their digital organization.
Bottom image: Light box table originally created for display at MAXXI.
Our last full day in Rome, we spent the morning at the Elizabetta Catalano Archives.
We had earlier in the week been introduced to her work through a show held in collaboration between the Elizabetta Catalano Archives and MAXXII's Archives that Giulia Pedace detailed. From this, I was already intrigued by her relationship to authorship and documentation of performance. While walking through the space on Friday, we were told that her roots in photography were found while originally on the set of a Fellini film as an actress, documenting the people and behind-the-scenes environment.
As promised, visual evidence of Shrek in Siena.
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