Italian collector and patron Claudio Cerasi dies at 90

Claudio Cerasi, the Italian entrepreneur, collector, and philanthropist who co-founded Palazzo Merulana in Rome with his wife Elena, died on the night of April 19-20, 2020. Born into the SAC (Società Appalti e Costruzioni) family, he began working in the family business in the 1950s after earning a degree in Economics and Commerce. SAC built major projects including Zaha Hadid's MAXXI Rome, ABDR's Teatro dell'Opera di Firenze, and 5+1AA's Italian Space Agency. Cerasi's most personal project was the restoration of the former Ufficio d'Igiene on Via Merulana, a early 20th-century building damaged in WWII. The Rome City Council had sought its resolution since 1957; SAC won the redevelopment tender in 2002, with work starting in late 2014. In 2018, the space reopened as Palazzo Merulana, housing the Fondazione Elena e Claudio Cerasi's collection of modern and contemporary Italian art, focusing on the Scuola Romana and 20th-century Italian art. The 2,000-square-meter exhibition space features works by Antonietta Raphael, Ceroli, Pugliese, Penone, Mafai, Donghi, de Chirico, Cambellotti, Capogrossi, Balla, and Jan Fabre. Managed by CoopCulture under director Andrea Valeri, the museum became a model for private museums in Italy.