edited by Federica Andreoni and Maite Méndez Baiges
The Grand Tour originated between the 17th and 18th centuries as an educational journey undertaken by European artists and intellectuals who arrived in Rome to engage with the city as a laboratory for knowledge. This tradition gradually became institutionalised through the presence in Rome of foreign academies, places of residence and research that still welcome individuals from various countries every year. The academies constitute a unique peculiarity of the city and represent an unparalleled cultural resource: an international network of institutions that continues to foster exchanges, disciplinary cross-pollination and new interpretations of urban space. If it is true that the journey to Rome represents a fundamental moment in education and the transformation of one's perspective, the opposite is equally true: the investigations that this intellectual community undertakes into the city every year constitute a precious tool for learning to think about Rome in ever-new and renewed ways. The foreign academies offer Rome the opportunity to be contemporary, in a different way every year.
The CONTEMPORARY GRAND TOUR exhibition, set up in the Monitor P room and conceived as a temporary and in-progress archive, brings together materials produced by the international community that has passed through Rome in recent decades, thanks to research and artistic and architectural production grants from foreign academies. Drawings, photographs, videos, paintings, sound installations, cartographic materials, texts, models and archival materials provide multiple interpretations of the city, showing how the condition of temporary residence can generate unprecedented and sensitive readings of Rome's architecture, landscape and urban space. The selection brings together figures belonging to different generations and disciplinary fields – visual art, landscape, architecture, photography, research and music – who offer a layered reading of the city, connecting design practices, theoretical research and different artistic languages. CONTEMPORARY GRAND TOUR thus exhibits the image of a city that continues to be observed and reinvented through the eyes of those who pass through it
temporarily – and simultaneously.
WORKS AND PROJECTS BY Soren Aagaard, Marta Alonso de Lucas, Susanne Brorson, Ingrid Maria Buchwald Eguía, Barbara Fluxá Álvarez-Miranda, Barbara Gál, Sara Lindberg, Johanne Rude Lindegaard, Lilia Paloma Maure Rubio, Annalisa Metta, Sabrina Morreale, Jane Muus, Anita Viola Nielses, Veronica Pecile, Rocío Quillahuaman, Rebeca Rodríguez, Guadalupe Sierra, Juan Baraja, Jonathan Berger, Iñaqui Carnicero, Nicolás Combarro, Michel Desvigne, Guerreiro do Divino Amor, Damian Flores Llanos, Amedeo Freixas Vivó, Iñigo Garcia Odiaga, José Guerrero, Tybor Gyenis, José Ignacio Hervada, Jonathan Carl Jensen, Hans Peter L’orange, Mathieu Lucas, Luis Moreno Mansilla, Rafael Moneo, Francisco Javier Muñoz Fernández, Simon Bodh Nielsen, Joan Soler, Tono Vizcaíno.
CONTEMPORANEO GRAND TOUR exhibition promoted by the Casa dell’Architettura and the Order of Architects PPC of Rome and its province as part of the CONTEMPORANEA event in collaboration with the Real Academia de España en Roma with the support of the Hungarian Academy in Rome, the Danish Academy in Rome, the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo, the American Academy in Rome, the Norwegian Institute in Rome, the Finnish Institute in Rome, the Swiss Institute in Rome.