Florence and the twentieth century: a stormy relationship between love and hate, rich in avant-garde art, and full of controversy. The city of the Renaissance during this period is represented in the Museo Novecento (20th Century Museum), which opened officially on June 24, 2014, in Piazza Santa Maria Novella.
The headquarters of the Museum in Piazza Santa Maria Novella
The museum is housed in the Hospital of St. Paul, which was founded at the beginning of the thirteenth century as an area of refuge for pilgrims, the poor, and beggars.
In the second half of the fifteenth century the building was expanded. The construction of the front porch was assigned to Florentine architect Michelozzo, although for a long time it was thought that it was actually built by Filippo Brunelleschi, because of its similarity to the Loggia of the Hospital of the Innocents in Piazza Santissima Annunziata, designed by the latter.
In 1588, under Grand Duke Ferdinand I, the Hospital of St. Paul became a place to accommodate convalescents who came from hospitals in Florence.
Its function was then altered by Leopold Lorraine in 1780 as a place to provide education for poor girls, and therefore became known as the Leopoldine Schools. After World War II it was converted into a school building by the city. Now, after a long restoration, the complex houses the 20th Century Museum in Florence.
How the Museo Novecento in Florence was born
The halls of the Museum contain visual poetry, radical architecture, art films, the works of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the parades of Pitti, as well as the first displays devoted to electronic music.
After the flood of the Arno that devastated the city in 1966, much of Florence’s artistic heritage was damaged. For this reason, the art critic Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti launched an appeal to artists from all over the world to endow the city with their works of art. Two hundred artists responded to the call.
Many works of art remained behind closed doors in municipal depositories for years awaiting a suitable location. These works are thus considered the first original nucleus of the Museum.
A multimedia and interdisciplinary museum
The 20th century Museum in Florence is dedicated to Italian art of the twentieth century and displays a selection of about 300 works distributed in 15 exhibition areas, as well as a study room, a room for drawings and prints, and a room for lectures and screenings.
The works are arranged counter-chronologically dating back from to the early years of the twentieth century until 1990, in a path where the works are complemented by multimedia workstations, devices, sound and video rooms.
The Museum has an interdisciplinary approach that allows the visitor to appreciate the works of art in relation to the context in which they were produced: the art is offered alongside music, literature, theater and architecture, musical compositions, poetry, literary magazines , theater sketches, cinema halls, as well as over a thousand documents, videos, television interviews, vintage photos and radio recordings.
It is reconstructed according to the artistic season in which Florence was at the center of the national and international cultural scene.
The artists and customized museum tours
The Museum wants to, on the one hand, be a story of the twentieth century through the history of the city, and on the other, provide a glimpse of the artistic experience nationally and internationally, especially after the sixties.
Proposed itineraries are specifically designed for different audiences including adults, children, and families. Also, the museum offer is extended to temporary exhibitions with in-depth, monographic exhibitions and various thematic dossiers. In the 20th Century Museum, visitors can experience customized tours according to their own interests.
Among the artists on display permanently are De Chirico, Morandi, Emilio Vedova and Guttuso, Ottone Rosai, as well as young Florentine sculptors such as Antonio Catelani, Daniela Di Lorenzo and, Carlo Guaita.
Modern art and architecture in Florence: other paths
Florence has a museum with works by twentieth-century painters, the Gallery of Modern Art, located on the second floor of Palazzo Pitti. The collection of the Gallery of Modern Art offers a wide selection of works dating from the late eighteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century.
Here are works of Italian painters such as Macchiaoli, artists who came from Livorno and heralded French Impressionism. Conversely, over the last decades construction of new buildings by famous architects of our time has occurred to display contemporary architecture. One example is the New Court in the Novoli designed by the architect Leonardo Ricci and the New Opera Paolo Desideri.
In these cases, public opinion is divided between those who judge these buildings the product of the future and those who cannot conceive these Architecturally Modern buildings in a capital city of the Renaissance.
Pictures by Museo Novecento and Wikipedia