Zoom event.
What food was considered scandalous if consumed by women in public during the Renaissance? Why is carpaccio called carpaccio; the Bellini, the Bellini? How did the Colosseum get its name?
Test your knowledge while discovering surprising new facts about “The Boot”. An interactive cultural “trivia” challenge for anyone in amore with Italy and its astonishing culture and delizioso cuisine.
Carla Gambescia, lecturer, travel writer & author of the awarding-winning book, “La Dolce Vita University: An Unconventional Guide to Italian Culture from A-Z” – available on Amazon
If you wish to attend this event, please register by clicking the “book now” button. You will be redirected to our Zoom registration page. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
PLEASE NOTE: we are not making any formal charge for participation in this event. But we strongly encourage all those attending to consider making a donation (we suggest a minimum donation of £5 per event) to enable us to maintain our programme of events and to support our other cultural initiatives. If you are able to make a donation, please use the relevant button on the right or arrange a bank transfer to:
The British Italian Society
Sort code: 20-36-88
Account No: 30197866
Please quote: donation
SOLD OUT!
Please contact us if you wish to be included in the waiting list
THE LECONFIELD LECTURE 2021
Sir Christopher Frayling is an award-winning broadcaster, writer, educationalist and perhaps the most wide-ranging cultural historian of our times: the author of numerous publications on subjects ranging from vampires to Westerns; the writer and presenter of successful television series, whether on advertising, the Middle Ages or Tutankhamun. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and was Rector of the Royal College of Art, London, from 1996 to 2009, where he remains Professor Emeritus of Cultural History. His many public appointments have included Chairman of Arts Council England; Chairman of the Design Council; and the longest-serving Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
A DRINKS RECEPTION WILL FOLLOW THE TALK
A story of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and the general lockdown in Italy, narrated through an extraordinary radio project. Between March and May 2020, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bergamo, a city dramatically affected by the pandemic, broadcast a live Instagram show for 66 consecutive days, hosting talks and debates with guests in the various fields of culture, politics, sport and entertainment. With the aim of creating direct contact with the local population of Bergamo, Radio GAMeC spoke to the world and, above all, spoke about the world. Leonardo Merlini, together with the director of the GAMeC Lorenzo Giusti and the PR Lara Facco, the creator of the project and the host of the radio show, hosted several prominent guests, such as the former prime minister Enrico Letta, the architect Stefano Boeri, the writer Tom McCarthy, the former minister of culture Giovanna Melandri, the critic Hans Ulrich Obrist, writers such as Chiara Valerio and Michela Murgia and artists such as Chiara Bersani , Thomas Hirschhorn, Simone Fattal, Ragnar Kjartansson, to name a few. Leonardo will share his insights into this fascinating story, which started as an attempt to be a point of reference for the city of Bergamo and its citizens while combining the news from the city with debates about culture and the possibilities of moving forward in the times of social media – a very different way for a museum to enter people’s lives, to create a community that basically ignored the fact that the GAMeC was a museum.
Leonardo Merlini is a journalist, literature and culture critic, working at ASKANEWS, an Italian national news agency. He wrote two guide books on Franz Kafka and David Foster Wallace. He is a chronicler in the contemporary art sector. He regularly writes for Minima & Moralia, collaborates with the Triennale Milano, International, Ossigeno, Il Magazine and Vanity Fair. He hosts Tralfamadore, a book show on Radio Raheem. Together with Marianna Albini he founded the Bebookers collective, which organizes literary shows, events, reading groups and more. In 2016, with the director Vittorio Bedogna, he created thirty-five short documentaries for Web TV regarding 35 personalities in the art world. He created and hosted the first cycle of the Radio GAMeC project with Lorenzo Giusti and Lara Facco. He writes and works in Milan.
If you wish to attend this event, please register by clicking the “book now” button. You will be redirected to our Zoom registration page. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
PLEASE NOTE: we are not making any formal charge for participation in this event. But we strongly encourage all those attending to consider making a donation (we suggest a minimum donation of £5 per event) to enable us to maintain our programme of events and to support our other cultural initiatives.
Annual General Meeting: 22 June 2021
All members are invited to participate in this year’s AGM, which will review the Societies’ activities during the year, elect Trustees and other office-holders and review the annual accounts.
The meeting will be held online this year and registration is required.
The meeting will last approximately 20 minutes and it will be followed at 7 pm by the Annual Charles de Chassiron Lecture, “The Most Beautiful Language in the World” by Stefano Jossa.
For this lecture, you need to register separately by heading to the relevant event page.
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To book for the AGM, please click the BOOK NOW button, you will be redirected to our Zoom registration page. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Andrea Viliani will guide you on a visit of images of Pompeii@Madre: Archaeological Matters, an exhibition based on a rigorous research project stemming from an unprecedented collaborative initiative between the Archaeological Park of Pompeii (Parco Archeologico di Pompeii), one of the world’s most important archaeological sites, and Madre, the contemporary art museum of Campania Region.
Stella Bottai will present the project Pompeii Commitment: Archaeological Matters, which reconfigures the archaeological site of Pompeii as a foundation for alternative forms of knowledge, forming through a multiplicity of functions: artist-led research center, collection of testimonies and documents, indefinite collection, hypothetical and transdisciplinary museum, library in formation. All these possible departments are dedicated to studying and sharing the multiple cognitive potentials of Pompeii and the episteme of its “archaeological matters”.
Andrea Viliani is the creator and co-curator of “Pompeii Commitment: Archaeological Matters”, at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. Since 2020, he has also been the curator and Head of the CRRI (Castello di Rivoli Research Centre), a new department at the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art.
He was General and Artistic Director of the Donnaregina Foundation for contemporary arts / Mother of Naples, where he coordinated the project “Per_formare una Collezione”, and curated a number of personal and collective exhibitions, among which “Pompei@Madre: Archaeological Matters”.
He was also Director of the Civic Gallery Foundation-Center for Research on Contemporaneity in Trento, Curator at the MAMbo-Museum of Modern Art in Bologna and Assistant Curator at the Castello di Rivoli Museo of Contemporary Art. In 2006 he was among the 60 players of the Biennale de Lyon and in 2010-2012 among the 6 members of the Agent-Core Group of dOCUMENTA. In 2005 he received the Lorenzo Bonaldi Prize for Art-EnterPrize for the NO MANIFESTO exhibition and the catalogue project. He has also curated exhibitions, performance actions and research projects at the Centre International d’Art et du Paysage-Île de Vassivière, the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice, FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon in Montpellier, GAMeC-Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Bergamo, MART-Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Museion-Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Bolzano and Marino Marini Museum of Florence.
He is the author of essays in scientific publications and art books and contributes to numerous magazines including “Artribune”, “Flash Art”, “Frog”, “Kaleidoscope” and “Mousse”.
Stella Bottai is a contemporary art curator and writer based in London. Since 2020, she has been Co-Curator of “Pompeii Commitment: Archaeological Matters”, the first contemporary art programme of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. She is also a curatorial consultant on Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art Cosmic Programs.
She was associate curator of the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019, curated by Milovan Farronato. Between 2016-19 she curated the exhibition and fellowship programmes in art and design at Kingston University London. She initiated and co-curated the podcast series Cold Protein with Lucia Pietroiusti, and currently hosts the Art by Telephone video-series on Harper’s Bazaar. She has edited several books and monographs, and has written for international magazines such as Mousse, Frieze and Dune
If you wish to attend this event, please register by clicking the “book now” button. You will be redirected to our Zoom registration page. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
PLEASE NOTE: we are not making any formal charge for participation in this event. But we strongly encourage all those attending to consider making a donation (we suggest a minimum donation of £5 per event) to enable us to maintain our programme of events and to support our other cultural initiatives. If you are able to make a donation, please use the relevant button on the right or arrange a bank transfer to:
The British Italian Society
Sort code: 20-36-88
Account No: 30197866
Please quote: donation
Since it was founded in 1941, the British-Italian Society has worked to promote knowledge and understanding in the UK of Italian culture, including Italy’s history, institutions, way of life, language and wider contribution to civilisation.
The British-Italian Society
86-90 Paul Street
London EC2A 4NE