CLASSIC RELOADED. MEDITERRANEA

Villa Audi Mosaic Museum – Beirut
from 29 June to 2 September 2018

Bardo National Museum, Le Petit Palais – Tunis
from 30 November 2018 to 31 January 2019

Villa des Arts de Rabat
from 8 June to 30 October 2019

An exhibition examining the links between classical tradition and contemporary artistic research. A selection of works from the MAXXI collection, the protagonist in a project touring various Mediterranean cities

The MAXXI collection is an ambassador for dialogue between peoples and an instrument of cultural diplomacy because bridges can be built through art against all closures and nationalisms. This is the exhibition CLASSIC RELOADED. MEDITERRANEA, curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi with Eleonora Farina, which will be bringing a selection of works from the MAXXI Arte collection to Villa Audi – Mosaic Museum in Beirut, the Bardo National Museum in Tunis and the Villa des Arts de Rabat.

The project is part of the cultural programme that MAECI is staging in 2018 in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, Italia Culture, Mediterraneo. In Beirut the exhibition had been produced in collaboration with the Italian Embassy in Lebanon, the Italian Institute of Culture in Beirut and the Sursock Museum, in Tunis in collaboration with the Italian Embassy in Tunisia and the Italian Institute of Culture in Tunis and in Rabat with the Italian Embassy in Morocco and the Italian Institute of Culture in Rabat. CLASSIC RELOADED proposes the rereading and revitalisation of a shared heritage of identity, a cultural and artistic base from which it is possible to reprise a dialogue, to facilitate that comprehension between peoples that today is especially necessary, a real antidote to all forms of fundamentalism.

The exhibition is intended to represent, through 20 works by 13 Italian artists from the MAXXI collection in relation to the spaces and the works contained in Villa Audi, the Bardo and the Villa des Arts, the culture of the “sea between the lands”, that cultural independence that is at the same time open to the other, that co-existence between peoples, that relationship between local and global, that has always characterised the Mediterranean.
The works dialogue, in Beirut, with the splendid Roman mosaics of the II-VI century AD of Villa Audi, in Tunis with the architectures and ornamental decorations of the Petit Palais in the Bardo Museum and Rabat with the decorations of the thirties in Art deco style of Villa des Arts.

The artists: Salvatore Arancio, Maurizio Cattelan, Enzo Cucchi, Gino De Dominicis, Bruna Esposito, Flavio Favelli, Mimmo Jodice, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Liliana Moro, Luigi Ontani, Pietro Ruffo, Remo Salvadori, Luca Trevisani.