Description
On the 60th anniversary of Florence’s 1966 flood, Restoration Conversations magazine pays tribute to women, like Maria Luisa Righini Bonelli and Luisa Beccherini, whose commitment and foresight helped salvage treasures at the Museum of History of Science (now Museo Galileo) and the Uffizi, when the city was engulfed by 600,000 tons of water and mud. American filmmaker Barbara Kopple celebrates fifty years of documentary cinema with her trilogy on workers’ rights at Florence’s Festival dei Popoli. The labour-inspired stories she captures on camera stand in conversation with Firenze: ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, an exhibition at Villa Bardini, curated by Giovanna Uzzani, which features pictures from Foto Locchi, a historic Florentine studio that marked the signs of the times.
With ‘Performance, Dance and Party Slippers’, the magazine leads us up the cypress-lined path at Villa La Pietra, to discover the theatrical interests of its former owner Hortense Acton. The journey continues at Villa la Quiete, a place of spiritual retreat for Medici women, where modern-day dancers stage a performance entitled Alii Horti (Other Gardens) to tribute the women who once lived there. Next, former choreographer Federica Parretti shares a personal story of early twentieth-century American dancer Isadora Duncan – a foremother of Modern Dance – who revolutionised audience expectations in Florence and farther afield.
This issue takes readers on a whirlwind tour through museums and cultural venues spotlighting art by women. The warm domestic scenes displayed at Mary Cassatt’s Musée d’Orsay retrospective, the portraiture of painter Eva Gonzalès at Le Petit Palais, the light-filled frescos by Phoebe Anna Traquair in her ‘Sistine Chapel of Edinburgh’ provide clues as to how these artists viewed the world and conveyed it to posterity. At the V & A in London, fashion becomes art for Surrealist designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who brought cutting-edge artists into the realm of prêt-à-porter. As The Bayeux Tapestry gathers crowds at The British Museum, author and embroiderer Jan Messent tells a unique story of the women who stitched history into the huge 11th-century tapestry.
RC #10 – Women of the Florence Flood, The Uffizi Underwater, Foto Locchi at Villa Bardini, Barbara Kopple, Women Trailblazers in Documentary Cinema, Historic women at Villa La Quiete, Medici Princesses, Roaring Twenties at Villa La Pietra, Alii Horti performance, Isadora Duncan, Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès, Elsa Schiaparelli, The Bayeux Tapestry, Jan Messent
