It always happens this way, for the past four years now, and each time it’s a surprise: we discover, in the immense heritage of the Library, a collection, a document, a print, a manuscript; we go looking for other traces, explore nearby paths, and a story unfolds. Then we ask one or more contemporary artists or creatives to tell that story in their own way, according to their style and sensibility.
Sometimes – increasingly often, in fact – it’s the artist who brings us an idea, a curiosity that prompts us to explore the archives and allows us to discover (or rediscover) works from our collections.
This happened with book designer Irma Boom, who, through her graphically striking books, the result of deep research into typography and form as well as content, led us directly to the remarkable collection of Don Giuseppe De Luca: more than 400 items including books, posters, and Futurist prints, collected by the priest born in 1898 – a scholar, enthusiast, and founder of the publishing house Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
For this exhibition, in addition to the Poma collection and all the objects, documents, and books donated and made available by the Galateri family, we began with one of Lorenzo Cherubini’s passions: the scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, born in 1859 and who lived for 90 years. Starting from this inspiration (just as Lorenzo begins his docu-trip through South America by greeting the statue of the scientist), we came across a multi-volume work kept in the Chigi collection: Plantes équinoxiales recueillies au Mexique : dans l’île de Cuba, dans les provinces de Caracas, de Cumana et de Barcelone, aux Andes de la Nouvelle Grenade, de Quito et du Pérou, et sur les bords du rio-Negro de Orénoque et de la rivière des Amazones, made up of installments published from 1805 to 1817 and which, fortunately for us, the Chigi family never had bound.
Visitors to the exhibition can admire 6 original pages, including lithographic plates of plants, explanatory texts, title pages, and other elements of the publication. And, alongside this work over a century old, is the modern reinterpretation by Lorenzo Cherubini, who created marker, pencil, and pen drawings specifically for this exhibition.