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Italian Research and Practice in the Conservation, Protection, and Preservation of Cultural Heritage

The Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Washington, in collaboration with Italian Academy’s International Observatory for Cultural Heritage, Columbia University, present a conference with Camilla CavicchiFrancesca de Tomasi  and Barbara Faedda. This event is part of the Protecting our Heritage series.

In the Fall of 2016, the Italian Academy established the International Observatory for Cultural Heritage to focus on the conservation, protection, and preservation of cultural heritage and the contemporary destruction of art and architecture. Through both the Academy’s Fellowship Program – with its group of international scholars in residence – and a series of public initiatives the Academy’s Observatory intends to contribute significantly to the contemporary global discussion on the political uses and abuses of cultural heritage as well as the exchange, transport, and trafficking of objects.

Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “[e]veryone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” Cultural heritage can be tangible, intangible, and natural; however—even in all of these subdivisions and categories—it’s always easy to identify and recognize a wide variety of the most intimate and profound human needs and expressions: traditions, symbols, customs, values, and memories.

The International Observatory for Cultural Heritage is designed to support and expand awareness of the multiplicity of cultural expressions, all of them crucial in the life of every human being, social group, and country. The Observatory aims to promote involvement and to support a broader concept of cultural heritage in the most democratic and pluralistic directions.

 

LOCATION
Embassy of Italy
3000 Whitehaven St, NW
Washington, DC 20008

 

DOORS OPEN BETWEEN 6:15PM AND 6:55PM

PHOTO ID AND QR-CODE RESERVATION REQUIRED

PLEASE NOTE: RESERVATIONS ACCEPTED EXCLUSIVELY THROUGH EVENTBRITE. NO PHONE OR EMAIL RSVP AVAILABLE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.

 

 


 

 

Camilla Cavicchi

Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (UMR7323 du CNRS – UFR Université François-Rabelais de Tours) & Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University

Talk: Ippolito I d’Este’s music room: reconstructing a lost collection

Abstract – The Este princes were bona fide music lovers, and, from the 15th century onwards, sought out and purchased avant-garde instruments for their own personal use and for the musicians of their court. This passion for musical instruments became, for all intents and purposes, something of a family tradition. Ippolito I d’Este (1479-1520), one of the most powerful and feared Italian cardinals, was an impassioned lover of instrumental music. In his palace in Ferrara he employed two important artists, the poet Ludovico Ariosto and the composer Adrian Willaert, and he had a room in which he displayed his collection of music and musical instruments. 

Cardinal Ippolito I d’Este commissioned organs, harpsichords, violas, lutes, flutes, and rare instruments from the most skilled makers of the time, including Lorenzo da Bologna and Lorenzo Gusnasco da Pavia. Thanks to 270 newly discovered documents in the Modena State Archives, we are able to reconstruct his collection and to assess the importance of collecting instruments in the Renaissance as a symbol of power.

This talk will show how to reconstruct a lost musical heritage and what we can do to preserve its memory and to valorize and promote the importance of the few extant traces.

 

BIO – Camilla Cavicchi is a musicologist associated with the Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours (France). In 2006, she was awarded a doctorate in musicology and musical heritage by the Università di Bologna, with a thesis on the French composer Maistre Jhan (1512–1538). In 2007 she began work on her CNRS post-doctorate on Renaissance singers prosopography at the Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance. She taught organology at the Università di Bologna and history of music at the Université de Montpellier. She takes a multidisciplinary approach to researching the history of music in Renaissance Europe and the Mediterranean; drawing from archives, prosopography, music iconography, organology and ethnomusicology, and focussing on three major fields: court music, regional and popular traditions. She has published on the subjects of musical iconography, organology, the history of musical institutions in the Renaissance, and orally transmitted musical repertoires, especially those of barbers and singers of tales.

 

 


 

Francesca de Tomasi 

Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University

Talk: The classical antiquities trade between Italy and the United States, 1861–1939

Abstract – During the period between the political unification of the Italian Peninsula (1861) to the approval, on the eve of World War II (1939), of a strict law regarding the protection of cultural heritage, one of the most irreparable and severe instances of damage to Italian historical and artistic heritage in the country’s history took place.

After Italy was finally unified, the new state could not adequately assert its authority and therefore lost the ability to protect the cultural heritage of its cities. The defense of the individual liberty to buy and sell anything that was in one’s possession prevented Parliament from approving strict legislation on the sale and export of art objects and antiquities. As long as the Italian laws allowed it, American collectors and museums conducted a widespread legal looting of classical antiquities belonging to private collections or found during archaeological excavations or building constructions. Italy, and especially Rome, became the center of the Mediterranean antiquarian market at the time.

If American “colonial collecting” had taken place in post-unification Italy, when would it have ended? American museum priorities and economics changed after World War I, with less emphasis on classical art, but what was the cause and effect relationship with the Italian situation? The presentation will briefly clarify the deep connections between museums’ and collectors’ choices, artistic taste, as well as the functioning of the antiquarian market at the turn of the twentieth century.

 

BIO – Francesca de Tomasi is an archaeologist interested in the history of collecting and collections. She received her Ph.D. in Classical Antiquities and their Fortune in 2015 from the University of Rome Tor Vergata and she later obtained a post-doctoral Fellowship at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici in Naples. Her research focuses on the export and trade of antiquities in post-unification Italy and on the network of museums, collectors, art dealers, intermediaries, purchasing agents and scholars involved in the antiquarian market. Francesca has joined will join the Italian Academy as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. Her research project aims to analyze the dynamics of the export of antiquities from Italy to the United States between 1861 and 1939, to reveal the extent of the trafficking of archaeological objects which today constitute a significant portion of American museum collections. Moreover, she will investigate how American museum culture was influenced by its connections with the flourishing late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century antiquarian market, showing the deep connections between the market and the museums’ and collectors’ choices and artistic taste.

 

 


 

Barbara Faedda

Columbia University, The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America

Talk: “The International Observatory for Cultural Heritage” at Columbia’s Italian Academy

Abstract – In the Fall of 2016, the Italian Academy established The International Observatory for Cultural Heritage to focus on the conservation, protection, and preservation of cultural heritage and the contemporary destruction of art and architecture. Through both the Academy’s Fellowship Program – with its group of international scholars in residence – and a series of public initiatives the Academy’s Observatory intends to contribute significantly to the contemporary global discussion on the political uses and abuses of cultural heritage as well as the exchange, transport, and trafficking of objects. Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “[e]veryone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” Cultural heritage can be tangible, intangible, and natural; however—even in all of these subdivisions and categories—it’s always easy to identify and recognize a wide variety of the most intimate and profound human needs and expressions: traditions, symbols, customs, values, and memories. The International Observatory for Cultural Heritage is designed to support and expand awareness of the multiplicity of cultural expressions, all of them crucial in the life of every human being, social group, and country. The Observatory aims to enhance diversity in cultural expression, to promote involvement, and to support a broader concept of cultural heritage in the most democratic and pluralistic directions.

 

BIO – Barbara Faedda is the Associate Director of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Italian. She received her Ph.D. in Legal Anthropology and Social Science from the Università S. Orsola Benincasa di Napoli after studying at La Sapienza Università di Roma. She also studied at the Summer Institute of International & Comparative Law in Paris; Cornell Law School; Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne; and at Boston University (as a visiting scholar in 2002-03). She is author and contributor to various books and manuscripts. Her recent publications include: Present and Future Memory. Holocaust Studies at the Italian Academy (2008-2016), editor, Italian Academy Publications, Columbia University, September 2016; “An Italian Perspective on the U.S.-Italy Relationship”, in Italy in the White House: A Conversation on Historical Perspectives, David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History, The White House Historical Association (forthcoming); “Foreigners, immigrants, and travelers in America in Da Ponte’s time”, in Power and Seduction. Da Ponte’s “Tre Drammi”, R. Eisendle & H.E. Weidinger, eds., Hollitzer Verlag, Vienna (forthcoming). Her professional background also includes experience in an Italian luxury fashion firm in Rome and a continuing research interest in advertising, food, and visual culture. She is currently working on an a book and an exhibition on the history of Columbia’s Casa Italiana and the earliest Italian scholars at Columbia.

  • Organizzato da: IIC Washington and Embassy of Italy
  • In collaborazione con: Italian Academy, Columbia University