Museo Novecento Firenze launches Italy's first museum-based artist residency program

The Museo Novecento in Florence has inaugurated WONDERFUL! Art Research Program, the first artist residency program in Italy hosted by a museum. Five artists born between 1990 and 1995—Friedrich Andreoni, Lucia Cantò, Benedetta Fioravanti, Giovanna Repetto—and curator Benedetta Casini were selected by director Sergio Risaliti and curators Eva Francioli and Stefania Rispoli. The residency runs from April to September 2024, with studios at Manifattura Tabacchi and a culminating exhibition during Florence Art Week in October. Participants reside in the Ex-Leopoldine spaces, engaging in studio visits, lectures, workshops, and meetings with architects, curators, gallerists, artists, designers, restorers, and scholars. The program aims to create a small art citadel and regenerate the area around the museum, supporting emerging research. It is supported by Florentine-born philanthropist Maria Manetti Shrem, who also hosts two UC Davis graduate students, fostering cultural and business bridges between Italy and America, Tuscany and California, Florence and the San Francisco Bay Area. Risaliti stated that the Italian art system struggles to support research and experimentation, and offering residencies and tangible help to new generations of artists and curators represents a success in the city's cultural policy, calling it the true Renaissance Florence that proves itself a laboratory and home of avant-gardes, not a showcase or passing stage.