The Museo degli Innocenti and the Museo Novecento are strengthening their collaboration with “Louise Bourgeois in Florence,” two exhibitions – Cell XVIII (Portrait) and Do Not Abandon Me – which will open to the public on June 22 and will be on view until October 20, 2024. The project brings the artist’s works to Florence for the first time, establishing a significant symbiotic relationship between her creations and the exhibition context.
Louise Bourgeois (Paris, 1911 – New York, 2010) had a childhood marked by a complicated relationship with her family, resulting in traumatic experiences that became one of the main sources of inspiration for her art. From intimate drawings to large-scale installations made from a variety of materials, including wood, marble, bronze, and fabric, Bourgeois expressed psychological states through a visual vocabulary of formal and symbolic equivalents. The scale and materials of her works vary as much as the forms, oscillating between abstraction and figuration. Emotions such as loneliness, jealousy, anger, and fear are the threads running through her work. Her almost obsessive writing, as well as drawing, remained central forms of expression throughout her life.
Cell XVIII (Portrait) presents a visually impactful work resonating with the history and collection of the Institute: an installation chosen by Philip Larratt-Smith in dialogue with Arabella Natalini, scientific director of the Museo degli Innocenti, and Stefania Rispoli, curator of the Museo Novecento.
The word “cell” in the title can be translated into Italian as both “cellula” (cell) and “cella” (cell), thus referring to both the elementary unit of all living organisms and the condition of isolation, separation, and confinement characteristic of prison or monastic life.
The “cell” displayed at the Museo degli Innocenti finds space within the Art route, which connects the gallery above the Brunelleschian loggia of the facade and the rooms of the Coretto overlooking the ancient Church of Santa Maria degli Innocenti. The subject enclosed in Cell XVIII (Portrait) seems to reinterpret the iconography of the Madonna della Misericordia, recurring in some of the most emblematic works of the collection and strongly representative of the Institute’s welcoming vocation. The image recalls the large female community composed both of the girls welcomed and raised here and of the figures who, performing various tasks, have helped ensure that the condition of women, and mothers in particular, became part of the institution’s mission alongside the promotion of children’s and adolescents’ rights, which is now a hallmark of the Florentine institution.
The exhibition Do Not Abandon Me, curated by Philip Larratt-Smith and the artistic director of the Museo Novecento, Sergio Risaliti, in collaboration with The Easton Foundation, will occupy almost the entire Ex Leopoldine building, between the rooms on the ground floor and the first floor.
Nearly one hundred works by Bourgeois will comprise the exhibition, including many on paper, such as gouaches and drawings, created in the 2000s, as well as sculptures of various sizes in fabric, bronze, marble, and other materials. Notable is Spider Couple, one of the artist’s most famous and emblematic creations, which will be installed in the museum’s courtyard. The title, Do Not Abandon Me, refers to the fear of abandonment that Bourgeois always harbored and in this case refers to the mother-child dyad, which constitutes the model for all future relationships.
