Bari, a new layout and a new room for the Metropolitan Picture Gallery

A new display and a new room at the “Corrado Giaquinto” Metropolitan Picture Gallery in Bari: last week, in fact, the Apulian museum opened the new display of the Grieco Collection and inaugurated the Hall of the Twentieth Century. An opportunity to rethink these spaces, were the months of forced closure during which the activity of the Metropolitan Art Gallery never stopped but, on the contrary, continued at an intense pace, and the result of this work is the revision of the layouts, as well as the start of important restorations.

The new layout of the Grieco Collection

The new arrangement of the Grieco Collection, a valuable collection of paintings from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, was born out of the need to change the face of an arrangement that the museum now felt was dated. Thus, making the theme of the International Council of Museums’ International Museum Day (“The Future of Museums: Regenerate and Reinvent”) its own, the Pinacoteca rethought, based on new research and current museographic criteria, the arrangement and juxtaposition of paintings from Luigi Grieco ’s 1985 donation. The new arrangement, designed to reveal relationships and affinities linking the paintings in the collection, was designed with the aim of highlighting the individual works thanks to the vibrant colors of the walls and panels, the new LED lighting system and the renewed educational apparatus.

The arrangement project used part of an exhibition system already in the disposal of the institution, which was upgraded and adapted to the 200 square meters of the three rooms housing the Grieco Collection. The new arrangement made it possible to optimize the space and allow for a distribution and positioning of the works geared toward the best visitor enjoyment and consistent with the proposed critical vision. In addition, each painting from the Grieco Donation is linked to a QR code that will allow the visitor to view a dedicated fact sheet.

The Twentieth Century Room

A new room entirely dedicated to works of the twentieth century, contiguous to the Grieco collection and the concluding space of the general tour, previously occupied by works owned by the Banco di Napoli, was also presented to the public.

The exhibition aims to acquaint visitors with part of the Metropolitan Art Gallery’s extensive artistic heritage, focusing on 20th-century paintings mainly by Apulian artists, authors of landscapes and portraits (Raffaele Armenise, Roberto De Robertis, Carlo Levi, Onofrio Martinelli, Vito Stifano, Raffaele Spizzico, Francesco Vacca). All these paintings are also linked to a QR code so visitors can learn more about the work itself. There is also a section of contemporary paintings (Umberto Baldassarre, Giosetta Fioroni, Titina Maselli, Umberto Mastroianni, Salvatore Salvemini) grouped around Nicola Carrino ’s sculpture and Pino Pascali’s 9sqm of puddles, one of the artist’s major works, among the greats of the mid-20th century.

The Twentieth Century room will also be dedicated in the future to temporary exhibitions, which will rotate to offer various themes related to the Pinacoteca’s collections. New features include new audio guides created especially for children, who will be engaged in a treasure hunt among the museum’s works in the company of a superhero.

The new twentieth-century hall

Bari, a new layout and a new room for the Metropolitan Picture Gallery

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