The two floors of Palazzo Massari, Ferrara’s former Pavilion of Contemporary Art, have been completely redesigned to create a “space” designed to house a selection from the Antonioni Archive, a dynamic exhibition itinerary reminiscent of one of the director’s sequence plans.
The museographic project is curated by Dominique Païni, former director of the Cinémathèque Française and the cultural department of the Centre Pompidou, and is developed chronologically: from the waning of neorealism to the so-called “trilogy of modernity,” from Anglo-American films to a return to the origins and artistic tradition of Italy and Ferrara.
On the ground floor the narrative is articulated through five monolithic exhibition sectors and culminates in the immersive rooms dedicated to viewing sequences from Antonioni’s cinema. On the second floor, on the other hand, the great hall is organized with movable panels that accompany the different functional needs of the museum programming: open spaces for screenings, lectures and events, modular rooms for temporary installations, and spaces for workshops.
The archive, consisting of more than 47,000 pieces, including Antonioni’s films, posters, original screenplays, stage photographs, drawings and paintings, his library and private discotheque, awards and the epistolary he entertained with the major protagonists of the cultural life of the last century, has been the subject of an ambitious research and cataloguing project acquired by the City of Ferrara directly from Antonioni and Enrica Fico.
Photo Credits: ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv / Fotograf: Krebs, Hans / Com L10-0197-0003-0001 / CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, Wikimedia Commons
