Rome, Latium, Italy
Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti is a curator and art writer, currently serving as Head Curator at Istituto Svizzero (Rome, Milan, Palermo). Previously, she was Chief Curator at Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin, where she curated new commissions by artists such as Lucy McKenzie, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Chalisee Naamani, and co-curated major monographic exhibitions, including Salvo. Arrivare in tempo (2024-25), Lee Lozano. Strike (2023-24, travelling to La Bourse – Pinault Collection, Paris), and Sylvie Fleury. Turn Me On (2022), as well as projects by artists Shirin Aliabadi, Nina Beier, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mark Leckey, Alicja Kwade, Cally Spooner, Monica Bonvicini, Finnegan Shannon, Louise Lawler, VALIE EXPORT, Julius Von Bismarck, among others. Her curatorial projects also include Motherless Daughters (VIN VIN, for "curated by," Vienna, 2023); Esasperate, Eretiche, Estetiche (with Giulia Crispiani, Almanac Inn, Turin, 2021); Get Rid of Yourself (Ancora Ancora Ancora) (Fondazione Baruchello, Rome, 2019); Abstract Sex. We Don’t Have Any Clothes, Only Equipment (Artissima, Turin, 2019); Good Luck, See You After the Revolution (UvA, Amsterdam, 2017); Why Is Everybody Being So Nice? (De Appel and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2017); and Dear Betty: Run Fast, Bite Hard! (GAMeC, Bergamo, 2016). In 2018, she curated the 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Abracadabra, and co-founded The School of the End of Time with Ambra Pittoni and Paul-Flavien Enriquez-Sarano. From 2018 to 2021, she was curator and tutor at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, leading a research-based residency program for international curators. She frequently lectures across Italy and Europe, and her writings have been published in catalogues and journals. She has also curated publications including Salvo. Arrivare in tempo (2024), Lee Lozano. Strike (2023), Sylvie Fleury. Turn Me On (2022), Shifting Views on Italian Art (2021), and The New Work Times (2018). She studied Visual Arts at IUAV, Venice; Curatorial Studies at De Appel, Amsterdam, Campo (FSRR, Turin), and CCC (HEAD, Geneva); and Critical Theory at the University of Milano-Bicocca. She is a co-founder and current vice president of AWI - Art Workers Italia, the first association advocating for art workers’ rights in Italy.
As Chief Curator, I have been responsible, under the direction of Sarah Cosulich, for shaping the new mission and identity of the museum, structured around three main trajectories: the temporary exhibitions programme, the Beyond the Collection project, aimed at reactivating the museum's permanent collection, and the outdoor installations project and public programme on La Pista 500. I regularly curate (and co-curate with the Director) exhibitions, projects, and programmes (list below). As Head of the Curatorial Department, I oversee the supervision, management, and organisation of the work of four staff members (Head of Production, Assistant Curator, Curatorial Assistant, and Production Assistant), working in dialogue and coordination with the Communication, Education, and Collection Departments. Monographic shows: Salvo. Arrivare in tempo (cur. with Sarah Cosulich); Lee Lozano. Strike (cur. with SC) (travel. to La Bourse – Pinault Collection, Paris); Lucy McKenzie and Antonio Canova. Vulcanizzato; Sylvie Fleury. Turn Me On (cur. with SC); Exhibitions: Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso (in collaboration with the Beyeler Foundation, Basel); Simon Starling and Giambattista Tiepolo. Tiepolo X Starling. Pista 500 new commissions by Nina Beier, Monica Bonvicini, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Alicja Kwade, Mark Leckey, Marco Giordano, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Chalisée Naamani, Cally Spooner, Julius Von Bismarck. Installations by Shirin Aliabadi, VALIE EXPORT, Sylvie Fleury, Liam Gillick, Shilpa Gupta, Louise Lawler, Finnegan Shannon, SUPERFLEX, Rirkrit Tiravanija.
"Motherless Daughters" is a group show curated in the context of the Curated_by festival at VIN VIN, Vienna. With Giulia Crispiani, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo, Harun Farocki, Beatrice Gibson, Delphine Seyrig
Lee Lozano. Strike (cur. with Sarah Cosulich) The exhibition Strike features a vast selection of works made by Lee Lozano that cover all of her brief but extremely prolific career, which extended from 1960 to 1972. After studying painting in Chicago, Lozano moved to New York at the beginning of her career and quickly gained notoriety within the art scene in the 1960s for her protean and highly original work. Lozano faced an art world dominated by pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art, especially with regard to painting. She participated in the artistic and social environment of the time, all the while preserving a radical attitude and resisting any form of classification or systemic power. The exhibition title offers a meditation on the polysemy of the word “strike”. As a verb, “to strike” expresses a violent action, an uncontrollable explosion of energy produced either by the human body, a tool, or a weapon. As a noun, “strike” evokes the radical refusal to work, in reference to Lozano’s famous piece General Strike Piece (1969), which signalled her first attempt to pull away from the art world. Lozano’s provocative, amusing, and just as lethal “strikes” were addressed as much at the art world as the social, emotional, and political dimensions of her own existence.
Founded in 2007, the programme consists of an intensive research residency in Italy that has the dual objective of developing the professional and critical skills of the three selected curators, while aiming at spreading knowledge of the Italian art scene on an international level. The residency features an in-depth research process, which sees the curators visiting over 200 artists’ studios, museums and art institutions across Italy under the guidance of a reference Italian curator, that acts as a tutor, mediator and coordinator of the residency programme during the period of residence and the development of the exhibition. The selection of participants takes place in collaboration with Royal College of Art, London; Graduate Program, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York; Curatorial Program, De Appel, Amsterdam; CuratorLab, Konstfack University of Arts, Stockholm; Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; MFA Curating, Goldsmiths University of London; MA Curatorial Practice, California College of the Arts, San Francisco; MAS/CAS Curating, Zurich University of the Arts.