IartNET

An international platform for artistic practice/research and cultural heritage at italian higher arts education institutions

Project Coordinator: Nicoletta Leonardi

Lead Institution

• Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera – Milano

Partners

• Università degli studi di Milano
• Conservatorio di Musica ‘Luca Marenzio’ di Brescia
• Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma
• Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara
• Fondazione Accademia d’arti e mestieri dello spettacolo Teatro alla Scala
• Accademia di Belle Arti di Catania

IartNET is aimed at enhancing the internationalization of Italian higher arts and music education institutions (AFAM) by promoting transnational cooperation through the implementation of actions built upon connectedness, experimentation, innovation, and diversity. IartNET is a system project based on networking and collaboration, with the goal of producing benefits for all AFAM institutions.

IartNET goals are:

• Boosting the digital accessibility of AFAM’s current practice-led and artistic research, as well as its cultural heritage, thus 1) allowing access to so far scarcely accessible materials both nationally and internationally, 2) reclaiming the role of AFAM institutions within a long history and tradition of Italian artistic excellence in all clusters, 3) generating trans- disciplinary and cross sector dialogues between the present and the past, and among different typologies of heritage and contemporary artistic outputs, as resources for creating a sense of community, fostering innovation, and imagining futures.
• Promoting AFAM institutions’ international attractiveness, and thus their international role and relations, via the implementation of a network of Italian and foreign higher arts and music education institution willing to share 1) data about artistic practice/research and cultural heritage, 2) know-how on processes and activities of internationalization compliant with EU policies.
• Fostering the establishment of research institutes at AFAM institutions via the implementation of an international hub in Italy aimed at 1) forming a research community of supervisors and experts; 2) designing innovative third-cycle degrees within the framework of the Bologna Process.

IartNET’s deliverables are:

• An interoperable database and a web portal in English that will collect, preserve, and make available to users open access content on cultural heritage and current educational, artistic, and research projects -with a focus on students and alumni, at Italian higher arts and music education institutions. The database will be implemented according to the guidelines and policies of the Italian Digital Library and Europeana, in order to be able to share data with both.
• An international network of higher arts education institutions aimed at reinforcing AFAM institutions networking abilities and filling the general lack of know-how on internationalization policies, strategies and best practices within Italian art academies and conservatories by creating opportunities for training, professional development, exchange, and discussion with peer institutions in other countries.
• An international hub for artistic research providing a much-needed space in Italy for the establishment of a research community capable of developing international, interdisciplinary, and inter institutional artistic research projects, master, and doctoral programs with a focus on innovation and the cultural and creative industries sector, as well as evaluations and assessments of artistic research, with focus on standardized descriptors and indicators of outputs.

These three objectives aim at filling structural shortcomings within AFAM institutions: the lack of content in English available to the public; the absence of courses taught in English, and the extreme scarcity of graduate and doctoral programs. As such, their outcomes will result in an enhancement of AFAM institutions’ international visibility; an improvement of the quality of art education in Italy for both international and domestic students; an increase in AFAM institutions’ international attractiveness.

The interoperable database will use the most up-to-date digital tools in the humanities, offering users access in English to thus far mostly inaccessible data pertaining to Italian artistic culture. 

The international network and research hub fosters collaboration among higher arts education institutions, facilitating the establishment of joint international master and doctoral degree programs in artistic research pursuing cross-sectoral and cross- disciplinary approaches.

The project will significantly contribute to the digital transition.

FOTOGRAFISTE

Women in photography from italian archives, 1839-1939

• Linda Bertelli, Principal investigator, IMT SChool of Advanced Studies Lucca
• Nicoletta Leonardi, Associate Principal Investigator, Accademia di belle arti di Brera

• Sara Catenacci, co-investigator
• Agnese Ghezzi, Research collaborator
• Marta Equi Pierazzini, Post doctoral researcher
• Greta Plaitano, Post doctoral researcher
• Emanuele Carlenzi, Research assistant
• Martina Cavalli, Research assistant
• Alessandro Masetti, Communication collaborator
• Livia Torchio, PhD Student

Why are there so few women in the history of photography? Some scholarly contributions have shed light on the obstacles that prevented women from succeeding in photography, as well as on the ideological foundations of a history of photography that prevented them from becoming visible within dominant narratives. Despite this, women in photography remain largely undetected, especially those active between the medium’s invention in 1839 and the outbreak of World War II in 1939. 

This project is aimed at giving visibility to women in photography during the first one hundred years of photographic history by retrieving their identities and stories from three thus far scarcely accessible Italian photographic archives: the photographic collection at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, the “Fondo Varie” at the Photographic Archive of the City of Lucca, and the “Fondo Tori” at the State Archive in Lucca. Fotografiste stems from cataloguing projects currently being implemented by the RUs on these archives, bringing them together under the banner of women’s history.

By moving beyond medium specificity, this project offers an alternative to dominant narratives shaped by traditional art history. It looks at photographs not solely as authorial images, but also as parts of integrated networks of different media, businesses, practices, technologies, fields of knowledge. Through a more inclusive and diversified, photographs are integrated with other types of sources, such as manuscripts, specialised journals, books, ephemera, business and civil registries. 

The findings are clustered and analysed through machine learning techniques and network analysis, allowing the tracking of significant relationships between items and their restitution into an integrated system of interpretation and visualisation. 

Items linked to women in photography are located within the selected archival sources and made accessible to users. This results from the recovery of neglected materials, the questioning of archival standards, and the advocacy of an intermedia and cross-disciplinary approach to the history of photography built on the dialogue with women’s history and gender studies. 

Intended results of this project are the following:

• Creation of a database of women active in photography in Italy (1839-1939) 
• Creation of new archival series 
• Development of guidelines 
• Training courses for archivists 
• Development of a digital platform for the visualization of results 
• Georeferenced maps and open platforms 
• Public tours, historical walks 
• Open day on data, archiving tools, and gender gap 
• Project's Website 
• Publications 
• Conferences 

Louisa Geraldine Bate Macpherson and Robert Turnbull Macpherson, The Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum, c.1857. Albumen print 27.8x40.6 cm glued onto cardboard 48.9x63.9 cm. Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Historical collections, Photo library [F_00429]

Virginia Gargioni and Giulio Rossi, Study of a female hand, ca. 1870. Albumen print 20.1x24.6 cm glued onto cardboard 31x35.7 cm. Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Historical collections, Photo library [F_00839]

Variazioni: Fede Galizia

WORKSHOP

Dal 2 al 15 di dicembre l'Instituto Cervantes, la Casa degli Artisti e l’Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera presentano il progetto “Variazioni: Fede Galizia”, con la partecipazione dell’artista spagnola Diana Larrea, dell’esperta italiana Roberta Bosco e degli allievi dell’Accademia di Brera. Un’occasione per riflettere sul ruolo delle artiste, spesso dimenticate nella storia dell’arte, e per conoscere un modo nuovo di guardare l’arte, oltre gli archetipi femminili.

Per oltre tre secoli il nome di Fede Galizia è rimasto relegato nelle note a piè di pagina della storia dell’arte italiana. Eppure la pittrice, nata e vissuta a Milano, è stata una figura chiave dell’arte barocca, specialmente per quanto riguarda lo sviluppo del genere della natura morta. Genere che in tutta Europa, ma in particolare nei territori che all’epoca formavano parte dell’Impero spagnolo ha trovato un grande sviluppo. Per questo motivo Diana Larrea, artista spagnola contemporanea tra le più conosciute e apprezzate da pubblico e critica in Europa, attraverso questo progetto ha deciso di rimettere sotto i riflettori l’opera dell’artista milanese.

Il progetto si articolerà in tre momenti: il workshop ‘Fede Galizia come referente artistico: laboratorio creativo multidisciplinare basato sulle sue nature morte’ si terrà dal 2 al 4 dicembre presso Casa degli Artisti e vedrà Diana Larrea rivolgersi agli studenti dell’Accademia di Brera. I lavori prodotti daranno vita alla mostra finale Variazioni: Fede Galizia, allestita sempre negli spazi di Casa degli Artisti, e che sarà inaugurata il 5 dicembre alle ore 18.00. Il momento espositivo verrà preceduto dalla conferenza ‘Arte femminile: oltre l’archetipo’, tenuta da Roberta Bosco lunedì 2 dicembre, alle ore 11.30, presso l’Aula 13 dell’Accademia di Brera.