THE FARNESINA COLLECTION
A collection that tells the story of twentieth-century Italian art to the whole world
La Collezione Farnesina è la raccolta d’arte contemporanea del Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale.
The Farnesina Collection is the contemporary art collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
It was founded in 2000 by the will of the then Secretary General Umberto Vattani, with the aim of documenting and enhancing the Italian Art of the early and late twentieth centuries.
Today the collection has almost five hundred works: partly with works from the fifties and sixties and with others of the highest profile that tell the evolution of Italian art from the early twentieth century to today.
The Collection, in fact, offers an insight into the movements that animated the Italian artistic and cultural scene of the first half of the twentieth century, such as Boccioni’s Futurism and de Chirico’s Metaphysics, as well as of the second postwar period, such as the informal art of Burri and Fontana’s spatialism.
The events of the second half of the twentieth century are equally documented, such as the Arte Povera by the trio Kounellis, Merz, Paolini; the pop of Rotella and Schifano; the conceptual art of Manzoni and the perceptive of Bonalumi.
The entire project is based on the free loan, a temporary loan formula that provides for the free loan of a work for a period by artists or their heirs, as well as prestigious museums, galleries and foundations.
Initially, the works were placed in open spaces, in the atriums, in the Staircase of Honor and in the corridors of the ministry spaces. As the collection grew more and more, it also found space in the boardrooms, meeting rooms and offices where diplomats work.
In this way, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can tell and promote Italian art, with its transformations, at an international level as it is enjoyed by an important network of embassies, consulates and cultural institutes from all over the world.
In 2019 the Collection turned 20, acquiring new works by artists such as Burri, Pascali, Zorio, Calzolari, but also by very young people, who represent the future of Italian art, such as Luca Pozzi and Emanuela Becheri.
For such an important collection that is constantly enriched with new works, it becomes essential to have a digital archive, to have a complete and updated history with all the information on the works of art that are part, albeit temporarily, of the collection.
Among the useful tools for archiving works of art we find Art Rights, a platform that offers professionals as well as collectors the opportunity to document, in complete privacy, even the free loan for use of works of art with over 200 fillable fields in the Art Rights Certificate, the first and true “Passport of the work of art”
Photo credits: MAECI – Ministero degli Affari Esteri. Sala Forma. Photo Giorgio Benni
And you, are you ready to get to know the works of the Farnesina Collection?
