CIMA has just launched its second season, dedicated to the revolutionary Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso (1858-1928). The installation features nearly a dozen sculptures–many on loan from important Italian and U.S. museums, including the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna Ca’ Pesaro in Venice, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan, and the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection in Dallas, Texas–along with a large body of Rosso’s drawings and experimental photographs. Anchored by an important loan from the Museo Medardo Rosso in Barzio, the installation marks the U.S. debut for the majority of the works, and it is the first time that a comprehensive group of drawings by Rosso will be on public display. In dialogue with the Rosso are two works by the American-born pioneer of abstraction, Cy Twombly.
I am very excited about the new research on Rosso that will happen over the course of this year. We have two wonderful new Fall Fellows, Chiara Fabi and Francesco Guzzetti, who are leading the guided visits on Fridays and Saturdays. During the course of their fellowships, they are each investigating various aspects of Rosso’s presence and impact in the United States. This work will bring back into focus the labors of Margaret Scolari Barr and the first museum exhibition in the United States dedicated to Medardo Rosso, which took place fifty years ago at MoMA.
This Thursday October 30th, we will hold our first public program, a Symposium on Rosso’s Bambino ebreo. Organized by art historian and Rosso expert Sharon Hecker, the program brings together a number of conservation scientists and conservators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums, and the National Research Council in Italy, to present the results of their investigations into Rosso’s approach to serial sculpture, focused in particular on the Bambino ebreo. This symposium springs from the amazing Bambino ebreo exhibition held at Peter Freeman, Inc. in New York in June.
I look forward as well to our second program, on November 20th, an evening of conversation on the resonances between Cy Twombly and Medardo Rosso, with two very special speakers: Nicholas Cullinan of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Isabelle Dervaux of the Morgan Library & Museum.
Come visit!
