Apr - Jun 5, 2011 - Genoa, Palazzo Ducale & Castello D’Albertis - Exhibition – Wonderful Africa. African art in Italian collections

by LiguriaGuide.com
(Genoa)

The exhibition features a large number of outstanding traditional African works of art from Italian private collections, many of which are being publicly displayed for the first time ever: masks, altarpieces, “fetishes”, funerary posts, ritual objects and items from daily life – all having a high aesthetic value and capable of taking us to the very heart of sub-Saharan Africa and letting us learn about its customs and lifestyle, from Mali to Congo, from the Ivory Coast to Cameroon.

A unique opportunity to discover a too-often-underestimated heritage, which for long has wrongly been labelled as "primitive art", specially in Italy, where the value traditional African visual art has only recently been acknowledged from both an artistic and commercial standpoint.

The exhibition consists of two independent but interconnected sections, hosted in Palazzo Ducale and at the Museo delle Culture, in Castello d'Albertis, respectively.

In the section set up in Palazzo Ducale the works on display are arranged taking another “classical” approach, starting from the role they play in our homes, in art galleries and in our imagination and then “dismantling” them: in this way, the visitors are led by the exhibition itinerary itself to reflect upon the way they look at the items and the experience they are going through.

The section hosted at Castello D’Albertis (which was originally itself the home of a collector), in turn, features a series of installations dealing with the topic of “genuineness" - both of the items and of the cultures they represent -, so as to encourage a reflection on the concepts of “purity” and “contamination" that underlie our wishes and fears.

Further Info:
ph. +39 010 5574064 – 65; www.palazzoducale.genova.it

Opening hours:
Palazzo Ducale, from Monday to Friday 9am - 7 pm; Saturday - Sunday 9am - 8 pm.

Exceptionally open on: Monday 25 April 2011 (a public holiday in Italy).

Castello D’Albertis:
October > March:
from Tuesday to Friday, 10am – 5pm,
Saturday and Sunday 10am - 8 pm,
Closed on Mondays;

April >September:
from Tuesday to Friday, 10am – 6pm,
Saturday and Sunday 10am - 7pm,
Closed on Mondays.

Admissions:
Full price € 9;
Concessions €7.
School groups and students up to 26 years of age € 3