In Rovereto, culture lights up for three days in blue for peace

Blue Night is back in Rovereto to mark theanniversary of the United Nations: from Saturday, Oct. 22 to Monday, Oct. 24, culture will be colored blue for peace for a three-day event of cultural proposals to be experienced in the city.

The great War Memorial Bell, a universal symbol of peace, will be open extraordinarily on Saturday, Oct. 22 until 10 p.m. with free admission. A guided tour of the bell and the Human Rights #NO-GAP exhibition, inspired by Goal 10 of Agenda 2030, is scheduled (at 8:30 p.m.). At 9:30 p.m. you can hear the hundred chimes of Maria Dolens, which return on Sunday morning at 12 noon sharp, at the conclusion of the peace trek: a guided itinerary starting from the city (9 a.m.) and arriving at Miravalle Hill in time to hear the bell toll. Both activities are free, but reservations are required at visitrovereto.it.

Saturday evening doors are also open until 10 p.m. at Casa d’arte futurista Depero and Mart, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, with free access to the exhibition La forza del vero. Modern painters of reality. Also scheduled are a guided tour of the exhibition (8-9 p.m.) and a visit to Casa Depero (7-8 p.m.). Both activities are free and can be booked by emailing education@mart.tn.it.

Special opening until 10 p.m. also at the City Museum. At its headquarters on Via Calcinari, the Fondazione Museo Civico di Rovereto offers the guided tour Una notte al Museo della Città (8-9 p.m.), to travel in discovery of Rovereto’s history, from prehistory to the modern age. On Saturday afternoon, for younger children, the Fondazione Museo Civico offers an animated treasure hunt at the Colle Masotti silk factory, meeting at the Museo della Città (4:30-6 p.m.).

The Italian War History Museum will remain open Saturday evening until 9 p.m. Throughout the day, there will be a visit Discovering the Museum and the Castle (3-4:15 p.m.), an activity included in the entrance fee, and a free guided tour by reservation themed “World War I and the Civilian Population” (5:30-6:30 p.m. and 6:30-7:30 p.m.). On Sunday mornings, guided tours of the Italian War History Museum (11 a.m.-12:15 p.m.). Also on Sundays, the museum dates families with the theatricalized visit Witches at the Castle, by the Company of Operose Bees (10-11:45 a.m., 2:30-3:45 p.m. and 4:30-5:45 p.m.). All initiatives offered by the museum are to be booked by e-mail at didattica@museodellaguerra.it

Special opening until 10:30 p.m. also for Teatro Zandonai, the end point of the urban trek From Napoleon to the Present Day. The palaces of Corso Nuovo are told (9:30-10:30 p.m.). On Saturday morning, on the other hand, visitors can discover Rovereto and its castle with a trek starting at 10 a.m. from Piazza Podestà. Both activities are free; reservations are online at visitrovereto.it.

“As perhaps not everyone knows, October 24 of each year marks United Nations Day because on that date the Statute of the Peacekeeping Organization, signed a few months earlier in San Francisco, came into force in 1945. Since then, Oct. 24 has been commemorated not only in New York and other UN headquarters, but in an increasing number of countries on five continents. Consequently, I think it is very appropriate that Rovereto, which since 2006 has boasted the coveted title of ”City of Peace" as a result of a Law of the Italian Parliament, is included - thanks to the joint efforts of the Department of Culture and APT - in the list of national locations adhering to the initiative. And since Peace is inextricably linked to culture, it is significant that Rovereto’s four museum entities are joining together to open, on Saturday 22, their doors to visitors on a protracted schedule until 10 p.m. and with free admission. The Campana dei Caduti Foundation, which holds in Maria Dolens a universal symbol of Peace, will close the program of events on the morning of Monday 24 at 11 a.m. with a lecture by Professor Giuseppe de Vergottini, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Bologna, entitled The War in Ukraine. What Questions?. A highly topical issue and one that, by reflex, makes our quest for Peace even more urgent and a priority," said Regent of the Fallen Bell Foundation and strong promoter of Blue Night Marco Marsilli.

Giulio Prosser, President of Apt Rovereto, Vallagarina, Monte Baldo enthusiastically launches the appointment with Blue Night "rethinking the theme oflighting. The color blue, symbol of peace, remains, to honor the anniversary of the United Nations, but the light is discreet, it is a beacon that lights up the places of culture to admire their great value for the community and accompany us toward a moment of reflection, also on the subject of saving and environmental sustainability." The heads of the cultural institutions involved also join in, revealing a preview of what will be symbolically illuminated in blue.

“The Blue Night proposal is in line with the educational function of cultural institutions and the museum’s ongoing commitment to offering its visitors a reflection on the impact of conflicts on societies,” says Francesco Frizzera, director of the Italian Historical Museum of War in Rovereto. "Initiatives like this offer important opportunities to open museum spaces to the community and provide opportunities to learn about and discover the city’s cultural heritage. We chose to illuminate Osvaldo Bruschetti’s sculpture, currently housed at the museum’s entrance, first exhibited during the No war contemporary art exhibition that the museum promoted in the 1990s. The work, titled Compromised Harmony, invites reflection on the consequences of war, a theme to which we have chosen to devote great attention in the new exhibition itinerary: visitors are invited to reflect on the impact of conflicts on the bodies of soldiers but also on the civilian population, population centers, landscape and economy."

As a symbol of Blue Night, the Mart chose for its Corso Bettini venue a work by Giuliano Vangi (Barberino del Mugello, 1931) entitled Standing Woman with Wide Dress (1987) placed in the middle of the circular fountain in the center of the square. Vangi’s research invests the entire human condition: the sense of loneliness, the bewilderment, the anxieties of the present. With rare effectiveness in representing solidity and stability as well as precariousness, the body reveals the eternal attempt to resist existential malaise. Crucial in this investigation are apprehensions about urgent climate change and environmental catastrophes, as well as the conflicts that disfigure the world and make individual anguish collective. Vangi depicts the modern human being with compassion, with participatory and sentient pietas. In the solemnity and eternity of his work, there is something spiritual, whether religious or secular, a bearing as sacred as existence can be.

For the Futurist Depero Art House venue, the choice falls on the painting La Rissa, also known by the title Discussion of 3000 or Humanity of Steel. It is one of Fortunato Depero’s most significant paintings in which the artist condensed some of his main research of the 1920s. Made in 1926, it depicts a brawl in a tavern. Men with outstretched arms, drunkenly wielding sticks, chairs and jugs of wine, are depicted under volumetric and solidified cones of light and shadow, a perfect exemplification of what Depero theorizes as the “architecture of light.” The scene thus acquires an eerie, at times metaphysical flavor and a chromatic taste played on the brilliance of whites and blacks and the use of a range of different tonal hues. An allusion to the political and social tensions of the time can also be read in the work; it is no coincidence that in 1947 Depero would publish it in his own autobiographical volume in English under the title Novecento dispute.

“We are very happy to participate in the 2022 edition of Rovereto’s Blue Night,” says Giovanni Laezza, president of the Fondazione Museo Civico di Rovereto. "Culture for peace is the theme of the initiative, and for this important anniversary the Museo della Città will open its rooms free of charge, where there are exhibits illustrating the history of the city, a history that testifies how the museum and its protagonists have always been a bridge capable of uniting histories, cultures and people. We chose to illuminate in blue the 5th-century Attic kraterdecorated with red figures, a vase linked to Paolo Orsi, the father of archaeology in Trentino, but discoverer of the ancient civilizations of Calabria and Sicily. It is an object that traveled around the Mediterranean, coming from Greek Civilization to Sicily, Magna Graecia. It was donated to the Civic Museum by the Syracuse Museum in exchange for Orsi’s private library, which remained in its original location in Sicily. The krater (as well as Orsi himself), is a symbol of studies on antiquity that succeed in linking different peoples, histories, civilizations and periods, deepening their knowledge, which leads to the sharing of knowledge, understanding and tolerance.

Info and program at visitrovereto.it

Photo by Graziano Galvagni

In Rovereto, culture lights up for three days in blue for peace

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