Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website Yearning for Italy. International Collecting in the Rome of the Vittoriano
january 11, 2018 - Polo Museale Lazio

Yearning for Italy. International Collecting in the Rome of the Vittoriano

Rome, Palazzo Venezia and the Gallerie Sacconi at the Vittoriano

7 December 2017 – 4 March 2018

Yearning for Italy. International Collecting in the Rome of the Vittoriano, an exhibition in two parts, opens in Palazzo Venezia and in the Gallerie Sacconi in the Vittoriano complex in the heart of Rome on 7 December 2017 and is scheduled to run until 4 March 2018.

The initiative, promoted by the Polo Museale del Lazio under the guiding hand of Edith Gabrielli, highlights the special attention currently being lavished on Palazzo Venezia and on the Vittoriano, which are now very much back in the public eye. A special single ticket has been devised for the occasion, admitting visitors not only to the two exhibition venues but also to lifts that whisk them up to the Vittoriano's spectacular panoramic terrace.

The exhibition is curated by art historian Emanuele Pellegrini, a professor at the IMT – School for Advanced Studies in Lucca, with the assistance of a high-profile scholarly advisory board whose members include Francesca Baldry, Roberto Balzani, Flavio Fergonzi, Annamaria Giusti, Donata Levi and Carl Brandon Strehlke. 

The exhibition offers visitors the first comprehensive display of the vast and superb collection that American husband and wife George Washington Wurts and Henrietta Tower put together at the turn of the 19th century and subsequently donated to the Italian state – specifically to the museum of Palazzo Venezia, where it is still housed today. The exhibition also sets out to recreate the context: that unique turn-of-the-century approach to collecting which became so intimately bound up with Italy that it frequently resulted in the donation either of individual works or of entire collections to the Italian state. The exhibition explores the dynamics of collecting and of the international market against the backdrop of radical change being experienced by the young Italian nation and its new capital, Rome, in those years. The construction of the Vittoriano, which began in 1885 and was completed and inaugurated to coincide with the Exhibition celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Italian unity in 1911, became the very emblem symbolising the city at the dawn of the 20th century.

The section of the exhibition hosted in Palazzo Venezia is devoted to the Wurts Collection, showcasing the most significant works from that collection, many of which have been removed from storage, studied and cleaned specially for the occasion. Hailing from Philadelphia, George Wurts, a US Embassy functionary, came to Rome with his wife Henrietta in 1898. 

More information on the press release