April showers turn into May flowers this week in Florence. Enjoy the new blooms with numerous events centered around culture, music, and art.
LIGHT MODE
DARK MODE
Most popular
The Florentine
Here’s our round-up for April 27-May 4 2023.
April showers turn into May flowers this week in Florence. Enjoy the new blooms with numerous events centered around culture, music, and art.
As part of their Medieval Florence course, The British Institute takes a visit to the Santa Croce Church. Participants will take an in-depth look at Giotto’s revolutionary frescoes in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels, Taddeo Gaddi’s Baroncelli chapel and Cimabue’s damaged Crucifix recently re-located to the Sacristy. The visit will conclude with Gaddi’s groundbreaking Last Supper in the refectory. The cost for a single session of the course is 40 euro. To reserve your spot, please send an email to bif@britishinstitute.it, or call +39 055 2677 8270.
The British Institute hosts a wine tour at the Colognole estate nestled in the hills above Rufina. The Conti Spalletti Trivelli family have developed this winery over several generations, and it remains a family-run business to this day. On this visit, participants will have a tour of the winery, led by Cesare Coda Nunziante. Then there will be a lunch designed to accompany the tasting of 4 or 5 of his best wines. The cost is 85 euro per person. To book, send an email to bif@britishinstitute.it.
Head to the Re-Fashion Festival at the FAF Contemporary Art Gallery for three days of talks, workshops and art performances concentrating on fashion and sustainability. Artists, designers, schools and foundations will come together to teach participants about how to incorporate more sustainable practices into their lives through fashion and art while also presenting workshops such as unlocking creativity, and more tangible practices like embroidery and screen printing. The series of events will conclude with an art performance/fashion show put on by local designers.
Expect immersive shows, live performances, interactive installations, new media art, virtual and augmented reality, and light and sound experiences at the Florence edition of the Bright Festival. This Italy-based cultural event fosters digital creativity in partnership with industry leaders, international artists and universities around the world.
Tickets here
Prato’s Textile Museum introduces an exhibition of 50 kimonos from the first half of the 20th century. This show documents the evolution of economic and cultural relations between Europe and Japan, which began in the mid-sixteenth century and over time became a major influence on fashion, art and culture. Another section of the exhibition also provides an in-depth study of traditional textiles and decorative techniques for kimonos and references to European artworks from artists like Matisse, Klimt and Kandinsky.
Legendary American guitarist Joe Satriani takes the stage at Teatro Verdi for part of his EARTH TOUR. Satriani taught himself guitar at the age of 14 years old and has gone on to teach some of the greats along with maintaining his own rock star career. This night of shredding the six string is one not to miss.
Buy your tickets
Over 75 exhibitors specializing in floriculture, horticulture, and fruit growing come together for this plant and flower market. Everything from plants, fruits, herbs, and pots can be found at this one stop shop for growing your dream garden this spring.
Sights and sketches is a grassroots medical and humanitarian relief effort from Southern California, USA that provides free vision services to underserved communities and mental healing through art community engagement projects. They come to Florence to present two pop up exhibitions called Respond and Seen and Heard. Artist Yara Almouradi aims to highlight humanity, vulnerability, and transparency through her work. Entrance is free for both exhibitions.
Best-selling author Lisa Clifford joins the Cultural Salon to host a writers’ workshop at Società Canottieri. The cost for this event is 20 euro and includes an aperitivo.
Lisa Kaborycha joins The British Institute for a lecture on Brigida Baldinotti, the 15th century female writer from Pistoia. Here she reconstructs the rare and respected voice’s life and examines how personal conflict with Lorenzo de’ Medici struck her family with personal tragedy. Lisa derives her primary research from manuscript collections of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, the Riccardiana, and Laurenziana, as well as in the archives of both Florence and Pistoia. The registration fee for this event is 10 euro and guests can join in person or online.
Register here
An immersive journey between the two cities for a vision of peace. This video installation created by filmmaker Guglielmo Magagna takes visitors on a journey of interweaving histories, identities, and challenges shared between Florence and Jerusalem. Along with the installation are numerous events throughout the city.
Artist Nicoletta Gatti hosts her first solo exhibition in Florence curated by Carlo Pizzichini. Her use of strong monochromatic colors and obscure layering create potent works that require time from the viewer to sit and ponder each piece. Her use of red, white and black, and even some green are meant to tie in with the natural elements.
This conference brings together leaders, experts and aficionados in the arts and culture world to explore the link between beauty and creativity, questions about cultural heritage, and art’s unique capacity to elicit change under the title of Is culture a way out? Confirmed speakers include visual artist Ernesto Neto, filmmaker Amos Gitai, architects Christian and Elisabeth de Portzamparc, director of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Melissa Chiu, as well as the director general of Palazzo Strozzi, Arturo Galansino, and Mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella. Panels will be moderated by four senior New York Times journalists. Delegates will have the opportunity to savour a welcome dinner at Palazzo Strozzi with a private tour of the Reaching for the Stars exhibition and tours of San Salvatore di Ognissanti church and the Antico Setificio Fiorentino silk workshop.
Full access tickets cost 1,500 euro.
Until May 1
Handicraft enthusiasts can get hyped about MIDA, the Florence International Crafts Fair, at the medieval walls of the Fortezza da Basso trade fair complex. Now in its 87th edition, the general public can return, post-pandemic, to admire some of the most impressive craft artefacts in Italy and from around the world. Sub-section Abita will focus on the home: from furniture, architecture and design to technologies and services.
Buy your tickets
The works of 10 artists who have been selected for the Maria Luigia Guaita International Prize for Contemporary Art Printmaking will show their works at Murate Art District. Among the artists presenting their works is the winner, Giulia Sensi. The award is dedicated to Maria Luigia Guiaita who is a journalist, publisher, entrepreneur, and founder of the Il Bisonte Foundation for Art and Printmaking.
Cuba-Born artist Enrique Martínez Celaya opens his sculpture exhibition Watching and Waiting at the Museo Marino Marini. Celaya originally comes from a scientific background and has experimented with several other art mediums such as photography, videography, and writing. He resides in Los Angeles and this is his first show in Italy. He will feature his sculptural works from 2005-2023.
Manifattura Tabacchi expands their horizons with new spaces dedicated to restaurants, cafes, stores, offices, artisanal workshops, and even a roof top garden. What was once an old tobacco factory is already one of the most innovative spaces in the city, working as an event space, art residency, and university campus for several years now. This new expansion morphs the multifunctional space into a true creative factory and a hub for creative culture.
Kicking off the artistic side of things, Manifattura Tabacchi hosts the works of Katja Novitskova, an internationally renowned Estonian artist. This exhibition is in part with the Reaching for the Stars exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi and is on display until June 18. Among other artistic efforts is the new B11 workshop, which has been transformed to house initiatives such as the Toast Project Space for contemporary artists.
National Geographic returns to Pisa’s foremost exhibition space for a major photographic show that revolves around the exploration of Planet Earth. Starting with a set of images that National Geographic’s photographers captured to document the beauty of our ecosystems, the show zooms in on what we know (and don’t know) about the planet where we live, as well as the human impact on the environment over the millennia.
Exhibition info
More than 50 works connected to the Gallery of Mirrors and Biblioteca Riccardiana will make up this major exhibition at Palazzo Medici Riccardi on Baroque master Luca Giordano (1634-1705). Expect a series of sketches on loan from the National Gallery in London as well as other important artworks from private collections in Europe and the United States, the Uffizi and the Opera del Duomo Museum in Siena, among others.
Exhibition info