Tribute to Capodimonte

From 26/10/07 to 20/01/08
 
To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Capodimonte Museum as an Italian National Art Gallery whose doors first opened to the public in May 1957 and was attended by some of the leading post-war cultural figures in Italy, the Head of Museums in Naples (Superintendent) wanted to organise a special exhibition.

This exhibition is not based on a particular artist or theme - like many of the other exhibitions which the Capodimonte rooms have hosted to great international and public acclaim - but an exhibition of famous works by "special guests" - artists whose work is not part of the museum's permanent collection but who have played an important role in Mediterranean culture.

This exhibition is the first and most important tribute non only to the artists and their work but also to the museum itself and the work it has carried out with consistency and determination since 1957, including the relationships and exchange programmes it has built up with major Italian and International museums. It is a tribute which is being paid to Capodimonte yet one which the museum offers to the city of Naples and the whole of Italy. It is the culmination of intense teamwork over the last fifty years with the most prestigious museums and art collections in the world which resulted in exhibitions - in Italy as well as in Europe and the United States - which were of great scientific relevance and whose loan policy aimed at protecting and conserving the works which an artistic heritage as rich and varied as that of the Capodimonte collection requires.

The exhibition of over fifty works of art introduces artists like Caravaggio, Rubens, Velàzquez, Tiepolo, Goya, Turner, Ingres, Monet, Cézanne, Degas, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Kandisky, de Chirico, Picasso, Boccioni, Balla, Basquiat and Pascali, along with other great masters from the 1600s to the 1900s. It will be set up in the museum's normal exhibition space to emphasise its very real link with the museum's permanent collection, a choice which has proved very popular with other exhibitions organised over the last couple of years.

Most of the world's most important museums have responded to the call and have assured Capodimonte that they will be part of the project and loan their major works. These include the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery in Londra, the Louvre, the Prado and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, as well as the Pinacoteca di Brera, the Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna and Contemporanea di Torino and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome.

Nicola Spinosa is in charge of the project.