Accademia di San Luca Opens Ripense Space in Trastevere with Julian Beck Exhibition

On July 9, 2026, the Accademia di San Luca inaugurated Ripense, a new multidisciplinary space in a former industrial warehouse at Lungotevere Ripa in Rome's Trastevere district. The 400-square-meter venue retains its original industrial features—high ceilings, open bays, and exposed steel beams—and previously housed the T293 contemporary art gallery from 2016 to 2025. After being acquired by the Fondazione Toti Scialoja for a planned headquarters that never materialized, the space was transformed into Ripense to expand the Accademia's activities. The inaugural exhibition, "Living! Julian Beck pittore," curated by Lorenzo Mango and produced with the Fondazione Morra di Napoli, runs until November 14, 2026. It focuses on Beck's painting career (1944–1958) through around 40 works, including paintings, drawings, photographs, posters, sketches, costumes, and materials from the Living Theatre Archive. Beck (1925–1985), co-founder of the Living Theatre with Judith Malina, began painting in 1943 after leaving Yale, frequented Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery, and worked within Abstract Expressionism. He abandoned painting in 1958 for "the more social art of theatre," returning only in 1982 to create a backdrop for "The Yellow Methuselah." Mango describes Beck as a unique 20th-century figure who fused art with life and notes this is the first historicization of his painterly journey. Admission is free.