Starting Saturday, September 12, 2026, the Lenci Collection at the Royal Museums of Turin will reopen to the public on the third floor of the Sabauda Gallery with a revamped exhibition layout and new resources for further exploration. The opening coincides with the “Notte Bianca” (White Night) event organized by the City of Turin to celebrate the pedestrianization of Via Roma: for this evening, the Royal Museums will be open exceptionally from 7:30 p.m. to midnight, with last admission at 11:00 p.m., and a special admission fee of 10 euros. Admission is free for visitors under 18 and for holders of the Museum Pass and the Torino+Piemonte Card, while visitors aged 18 to 25 pay 2 euros. During the evening, the curators of the Royal Museums will present the collection to the public.
Starting Sunday, September 13, the section will be open every weekend—on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays—and will be included in the regular museum tour at no additional cost beyond the admission ticket.
The collection comprises 132 historic and rare ceramics produced by the Turin-based manufactory during its peak production period, between 1928 and 1936. The works were collected and donated to the Royal Museums in 2022 by Giuseppe and Gabriella Ferrero, with the aim of making them available for public viewing. The exhibition opened for the first time in June 2023 with the support of the Turin Council for the Promotion of Artistic and Cultural Heritage.
The new exhibition layout retains a division into eight thematic sections: the image of women; time and the seasons; lovers; scenes from daily life; myths and stories; the world in a vase; on stage, with fairy tales and masks; and animals. This organizational structure is complemented by updated educational materials, enriched with multimedia and audiovisual content dedicated to the history of the manufactory, production techniques, and the works of the leading artists who contributed to the collection. The texts are also available in English, with the aim of making the collection accessible to an international audience.
Among the new resources is an interactive video dedicated to the casting technique—the method of shaping objects inside a mold used in ceramic production. The content allows viewers to follow the various stages of the process through the creation of an original piece, specially designed by the ceramic artists based on works from the collection.
The reopening of the Lenci Collection is also accompanied by the presentation of a selection from the Royal Museums’ collection of 20th-century works. This core collection stems from a major acquisition campaign launched by the Piedmontese Superintendency in the mid-1930s and continued into the early 1940s, with the aim of documenting the work of emerging artists in Turin and throughout the region. The acquisitions include 82 works, to which were added, after the war, several donations of paintings, etchings, and lithographs.
The early 20th-century paintings and sculptures in the collection exhibit a strong cultural homogeneity, partly due to the fact that the works originated from exhibitions organized in Turin by the Center for Action in the Arts on behalf of the Fascist Union of Fine Arts. Among the artists are several who worked for Lenci, such as Chessa, Da Milano, Deabate, and Riva, alongside other leading figures of the Turin art scene during the interwar period. Landscape painting constitutes one of the main themes, along with portraits, still lifes, and genre scenes, reflecting the diversity of Piedmontese figurative art in relation to developments in national art.
The history of Lenci dates back to 1919, when Enrico Scavini and his wife Elena König founded a factory in Turin initially dedicated to the production of toys and dolls, clothing accessories, fashion items, tapestries, and felt objects. The name “Lenci” derives from the diminutive form of “Elena” and was later transformed by the writer Ugo Ojetti into the Latin acronym “Ludus Est Nobis Constanter Industria.”
Between 1927 and 1928, the company began producing ceramics characterized by a modern and elegant style. Success also came on the international stage: in 1929, an exhibition at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan, curated by Ojetti, helped establish the manufactory as a cultural and social phenomenon, placing it in dialogue with contemporary ceramic productions from Vienna, Germany, and Denmark.
Lenci thus developed a repertoire of “decorative sculptures” aimed primarily at a middle-class audience, in which playful and ironic motifs coexisted with cutting-edge formal experimentation. Among the leading figures was Mario Sturani, a friend of Felice Casorati and Gio Ponti, whose artistic language was influenced by the innovations of Fortunato Depero and French taste. The exhibition also featured scenes of rural and working-class life, including works by the married couple Ines and Giovanni Grande, the archaic nudes by Gigi Chessa, the naturalistic subjects by animal artist Felice Tosalli, and the female figures by Nillo Beltrami, Claudia Formica, and Sandro Vacchetti, as well as depictions of the modern woman created by Elena König Scavini and Abele Jacopi.
Between 1927 and 1937, the factory grew to employ 600 workers and, thanks to technical innovation and the involvement of artists active in painting, graphic design, set design, and interior design, it developed models inspired by Art Deco and the European figurative tradition. Production continued into the 1960s, though with a direction that had by then moved far from the experiments of the 1930s.
The Lenci Collection will also be the focus of the “I Racconti del Patrimonio” initiative, a program of thematic in-depth explorations dedicated to lesser-known aspects and the history of the Royal Museums’ collections, led by the museum’s reception and education staff. The focused tours, included in the admission ticket and available while seats last, will be organized for groups of 25 people. The tours will take place in October and November every Friday and Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., except on Saturday, October 31, and Saturday, November 28. From December through January 7, tours will be held every Thursday at 3:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.
“We would like to express our most sincere appreciation to the Director, Dr. Paola D’Agostino, and the entire staff of the Royal Museums for their passionate collaboration,” stated Giuseppe and Gabriella Ferrero. “This joint initiative, which honors our Collection, contributes to a deeper understanding of a historical, entrepreneurial, and artistic period that is important to our city.”
“The Lenci Collection is a gift that Mr. and Mrs. Ferrero have given to the people of Turin and to the many tourists who come to visit the Royal Museums of Turin,” says Director General Paola D’Agostino. “The third floor of the Sabauda Gallery, dedicated to the decorative arts, concludes a journey through time that began with ancient clay production and culminates in the excellence of Turin’s manufacturing and artistic design during the early decades of the 20th century. These ingenious works that fill the space—including those displayed in the showcases—are once again presented with enhanced educational materials and a multimedia exploration of Lenci ceramic techniques. At the Royal Museums, we are honored and proud to host such a refined and prestigious collection, which reflects the sophistication and curatorial expertise of today’s Turin. We are all deeply grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Ferrero, who have once again chosen to support public access to their collection, presented in dialogue with the contemporary paintings of the Sabauda Gallery.”
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| The Lenci Collection reopens at the Royal Museums of Turin with a new multimedia exhibition |
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