Great exhibitions return from Bordon to Canova

A program of five exhibitions to start again was presented in Santa Caterina, Treviso

TREVISO. From Paris Bordon, with an exhibition that promises to be of international importance, to Canova, passing through Gino Rossi and Arturo Martini, with a tribute to Dante Alighieri 700 years after his death, which will coincide with the inauguration of the new wing of the Museum Bailo. With the extraordinary concomitance, from March to June, of the events dedicated to Bordon and Canova.

To start the season of art exhibitions, from the end of this year to the end of 2022 (“Covid permitting” the mayor Mario Conte has put his hands on) we will start with a tribute to Venetian portraiture of the 16th and 17th centuries with the exhibition in Santa Caterina of a masterpiece by Bernardo Strozzi: the “Portrait of Doge Erizzo” on loan from the Kunsthistorisches of Vienna, in dialogue with some paintings taken from the deposits of the Treviso Civic Museums and restored.

A tribute to Venice, we said, with the doge who is remembered “for having opened 14 theaters and invested in culture” after the plague, not by chance. The one presented yesterday morning in the former frescoed church, used as a conference room, of Santa Caterina crowded for the occasion, was also a bit of the manifesto of the cultural intentions of the administration which spoke of a conspicuous investment in favor of culture: ” We have been supported by private individuals for a sum of over two million euros, ”said the councilor for culture Lavinia Colonna Preti. Together with the mayor Mario Conte it was the turn of Fabrizio Malachin, appointed in June last year to lead the Culture sector of the Municipality and presented as director of museums (a position no longer fully held after the retirement of Eugenio Manzato, yesterday in the audience), make it official with the trappings of great art. And without sparing what has been read by many as a dig at previous management.

«I am proud of this project – he said – which places Treviso and its collection at the center of attention. We say no to exhibitions as a business. We have the responsibility to ensure a scientifically correct cultural “product” linked to the territory. For us Bordon and Canova are Treviso’s ambassadors of beauty in the world, like Prosecco ».

The first major exhibition next year will be, in fact, dedicated to Paris Bordon, 38 years after the great monographic that was held in Treviso in 1984. The curatorship has been entrusted to Simone Facchinetti of the Universià del Salento and to Arturo Galansino, director of the Strozzi Foundation of Florence, for the organization of Marsilio Arte. The exhibition that focuses on the great exponent of sixteenth-century painting, which will be held in Santa Caterina from 25 February to 26 June 2022, will make use of loans granted by the most important museums in the world: the Hermitage of St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London, the Louvre in Paris, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna with the famous “Venus, Mars and Cupid”, the Uffizi Galleries in Florence and the Vatican Museums with the exhibition of the altarpiece, “San Giorgio and the dragon” which will be possible to admire for the first time after the restoration. In addition to the paintings preserved in the Treviso Civics.

Also included in the itinerary are the works visible in the Cathedral of Treviso and in the church of Biancade. Before Bordon, it will be the turn of the exhibitions related to the expansion of the Bailo Museum (in the next piece).

It will start in a month, on December 18, with “Treviso Journey Dantesco” which will propose an original itinerary between ancient editions of the Comedy and modern interpretations. “Canova and Romanticism” will open on March 25, curated by Giorgio Pavanello of the University of Trieste, former director of the Cini Foundation’s Institute of Art History.

The year 2022 will close, starting from May, with the exhibition “Martini, Rossi and the informal”: a tribute to two geniuses of twentieth century sculpture and painting. –