NEW YORK (UNITED STATES) (ITALPRESS) – The Strozzi Foundation USA has celebrated its Fifteenth anniversary with a distance dialogue between Fra Angelico and Mark Rothko, in front of an audience of 130 people of the beautiful New York world of art and culture with a goal: to illustrate how Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, with its extraordinary exhibitions and under the guidance of Arturo Galansino – which has only received the award The evening explored the link between the recent exhibition dedicated to Fra Angelico with the next major exhibition on Mark Rothko, designed specifically for Florence with over seventy works. There is no doubt that Fra Angelico was the most important appointment of the international exhibition season 2025, it exceeded 250 thousand visitors, and its conception and preparation with the projection on the work of Rothko, was explored by a panel that could not be more appropriate.
On stage, together with the general director of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi Arturo Galansino, Carl Brandon Strehlke, curator of the retrospective on Fra Angelico, and Christopher Rothko, co-curator of the exhibition dedicated to the moderate father by Mario Calvo-Platero, Chairman of Palazzo Strozzi Foundation USA. Among the present, the director of the Morgan Library Colin Bailey, the director of the Guggenheim Mariët Westermann, the director of the Frick Collection Axel Rüger, gallerists like Virginia Coleman (Gagosian) and Marc Glimcher (Pace Gallery), as well as the Consul General of Italy in New York Giuseppe Pastorelli.
In his intervention, Galansino retraced the strategic choice that marked the transformation of Palazzo Strozzi: permanently integrating contemporary art into a city symbol of Renaissance tradition. A line that over the years has led to exhibitions dedicated to Ai Weiwei – with the installation of orange canopies on the arches of the palace – to Jeff Koons, with the research on the reflections of light and on innovative technical solutions, but also to great Renaissance exhibitions such as that on Donatello, with his famous bronze sculptures made possible by techniques of revolutionary fusion for his time, as well as were, in contemporary era, his works elaborated by Koons. And then again to Bill Viola and Anselm Kiefer, who in Fallen Angels intertwined philosophical and religious references of the Renaissance with the tensions of the present. “One of the keys to our success was bringing contemporary art to Florence,” said Galansino, recalling that the city “had no tradition of contemporary exhibitions”. The result was “to dialogue our tradition with the practice of today’s artists”. Carl Brandon Strehlke spoke of the “almost ecstatic response” of the audience in front of the works of Fra Angelico, underlining “a so intense reaction” that confirms the still current force of that painting.
Christopher Rothko recalled his father’s bond with Italy: “My father traveled little, but when he did it he went mainly to Italy”, looking for a spiritual intensity capable of involving the viewer. “He wanted those who looked at his painting to have the same intensity of experience that he was trying to paint it.” It was also announced the setting up of a small work by Rothko next to a fresco by Fra Angelico in the cells of the monastery of San Marco. The central moment of the evening was the delivery to Arturo Galansino of the Strozzi Foundation USA Transatlantic Leadership Award. Mario Calvo-Platero, who in his motivation recalled “the visionary leadership” with which the director increased the international stature of Palazzo Strozzi, strengthening the cultural dialogue between the two sides of the Atlantic “in a historical period of increasing international political tension” and expanding the understanding of the Renaissance in the United States through great exhibitions.
“We decided from the beginning that our task was to bring the values of the Renaissance into the present and build a lasting bond between Italy and America,” said Calvo-Platero, recalling the mission of the Foundation in the United States. The Chairman recalled that the activity of Palazzo Strozzi Foundation USA develops on several levels: from Palazzo Strozzi High School Renaissance Award, which over the years has involved nearly 10,000 students of American public schools and has allowed more than 300 young people to participate in a study course entirely funded in Italy, at the Renaissance Man/Woman of the Year Award, given to personalities who embody the humanities of the Renaissance, up to the Transatlantic Leadership Award. In addition to cultural and educational programs, the Foundation also supports scientific initiatives: for nine years it has been awarding, in collaboration with the Department of Systems Biology of Columbia University and with the contribution of Andrea Califano – Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology at Columbia University and among the leading experts in computational oncology – scholarships for the Summer Course on Computational Approaches to Cancer Prognosis, offering selected students a genetic internship.
– Photo Palazzo Strozzi Foundation Usa –
(ITALPRESS).
