18 November 2021

Outdoor. From the Museum to the schools of Florence

Outdoor is the itinerant project that presents paintings and sculptures from the twentieth-century collections of the Municipality of Florence in schools, hospitals, prisons, institutions for the elderly and libraries.

Between November 2021 and May 2022, twelve schools will be able to use the project for free, welcoming one of the works of the Museo Novecento for the time of one morning and experiencing its use directly at school. The paintings selected for this project cycle are: Nativity by Emilio Vedova (1942), Convinction by Alberto Magnelli (1968), Massacro by Renato Guttuso (1943), Il tram di Fiesole by Maria Bacci (1913). These are four particularly significant and important paintings, which will allow the participants to grasp artistic, stylistic and historical traits of absolute importance of the Italian twentieth century.

The initiative conceived by the artistic director of the Museo Novecento, Sergio Risaliti, resumes, following the long interruption due to the health emergency. A project that was enthusiastically welcomed by national critics, arousing interest even outside the Tuscan borders.

The intent of Outdoor is to promote knowledge of civic collections by intercepting and focusing on different audiences in everyday contexts, far from the museum dimension, in order to encourage a direct encounter with the work of art. Outdoor therefore proposes new ways of approaching the education of the visual arts, highlighting both aspects of the material history of the works, both cultural mediation and museum practice.

During the meetings, participants will have the opportunity to witness the arrival of the work of art and the unpacking operations (opening the case or any other types of packaging) by a company specialized in Fine Art transport. brief analysis by a restorer and an introduction on the practices necessary to ensure works of value, followed by an interactive narration on the work and activity of the artist by a cultural mediator of MUS.E, which will be followed by in-depth studies on work carried out independently in the individual classes.

Born in 2018 and included in the Le Keys of the City program of the Municipality of Florence, the project envisaged the involvement of some classes of the primary school and of the lower and upper secondary school, to then expand further in 2019 thanks to the contribution of the CR Firenze Foundation. To date, more than 800 children and young people have participated in the project, as well as a group of inmates from the Sollicciano Prison of Florence.