Prato's Pecci Center reopens. Kicking off a program full of new proposals

The Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato reopens today and presents a rich program for the occasion: from the extension of the exhibition The Missing Planet to Adrian Paci’s new video installation, from the ten artist flags that were made for Centro Pecci Extra during the closure period to the KENE/Space project. The first Italian exhibition dedicated to Ren Hang, a Chinese photographer and poet who tragically died at a young age, will also open on June 4, 2020.

To better welcome its visitors, the Pecci Center has sanitized all spaces and reorganized them by following all required safety measures and providing the necessary personal protective equipment. The building’s large structure and large halls allow spacing and contingent management of the flow of visitors (never more than 60 at the same time). Opening hours will be from 12 noon to 8 p.m., Thursday through Sunday. The Myo restaurant and bistro will also reopen on May 23.

“In addition to being a safe place,” said the Center’s director, Cristiana Perrella, “we would like the museum to be perceived, now more than ever, as an open and welcoming space even for those who have never come here before. That is why we decided on free admission and worked to restart with a rich program and new proposals, taking great care of all forms of mediation and participation, experimenting with new ones, and dedicating more space to educational services and reading rooms.”

“Never more than now is it essential to look to the future as a new opportunity for cultural and social growth,” added the Center’s president, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi.

The exhibition The Missing Planet. Visions and Revisions of “Soviet Times” from the Pecci Center’s collection and other collections offers an immersion in the artistic research developed from the 1970s to the present in the former Soviet republics, starting from a reinterpretation of the rich nucleus of works dedicated to this geographical area in the Pecci Center’s collection. It is curated by Marco Scotini and Stefano Pezzato, with installation design by Can Altay.

The video installation entitled Interregnum by Adrian Paci consists of sequences of funerals of communist dictators of different nationalities and eras, retrieved from state archives or Albanian national television broadcasts. Men, women, children filmed in close-up, in tears, or from a distance, in kilometer-long queues.

The reopening will then feature the Extra Flags, the ten artist flags created for the Centro Pecci Extra project, which kept the museum’s programming alive during the months of closure. The artists involved are Marinella Senatore, Nico Vascellari, Marzia Migliora, Eva Marisaldi, Flavio Favelli, Marcello Maloberti, Elisabetta Benassi, Massimo Bartolini, Elena Mazzi and Andreco. Each week one flag alternated with another on the flagpole in front of the museum as a sign of resistance and hope.

From these flags will be kicked off a workshop dedicated to the youngest; also dedicated to children and young people is KENE/Space, a project promoted by Fondazione Pianoterra Onlus, curated by Sara Alberani, by Ivorian artist Mohamed Keita, on view through May 31. Kené is a place of education, cooperation and knowledge, training young people in Mali through photography. The exhibition presents works created by students at Mohamed Keita’s workshop in Bamako.

Finally, the first Italian exhibition dedicated to Ren Hang will be on view from June 4 to August 23, 2020: the artist is best known for his research on the body, identity, sexuality and the human-nature relationship, starring a new, free and rebellious Chinese youth. On display will be a selection of shots from international collections that can restore the intensity of his poetics.

To encourage the active involvement of the local community, a public call will be launched to co-design a digital tool for autonomous museum visits dedicated to families with children aged 6 to 12. Adults and children who wish to participate will be involved by experts and facilitators in the design of a prototype for a multimedia family guide, an innovative tool that can be downloaded to visit the Center independently, discovering the museum’s architecture, its garden, sculptures and collections.

“In the coming months,” the director concludes, “the physical relationship with our spaces will be reserved mainly for a proximity audience, and this will be an important opportunity to increase citizens’ familiarity with the museum and strengthen a territorial dimension. Equally important will be to stay connected to the world. From this point of view, the use of digital space will be one of the contexts in which to nurture critical thinking and confrontation with the global cultural scene, today that the sharing of thoughts, content, and experiences is more essential than ever and can generate new scenarios for national and international art.”

Pictured is the layout of the exhibition The Missing Planet. Visions and Revisions of Soviet Times from the Pecci Center’s Collections and Other Collections (2019). Ph Credit Ela Bialkowska, OKNOstudio.

Prato's Pecci Center reopens. Kicking off a program full of new proposals

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