ARTIST RESIDENCIES

CALLIOPE ARTS x MUSEO SANT’ORSOLA

OPEN CALL - 2026 Artist residencies

The Museo Sant’Orsola, together with the Calliope Arts Foundation (calliopearts.org) and the Levett Collection / FAMM, promotes two residencies dedicated to women artists, with no age limit, aimed at highlighting the contribution of women in contemporary artistic practices. The residencies are conceived as a period of research, experimentation, and development of an original artistic project, with the museum’s technical and curatorial support.

Sant’Orsola, a former Benedictine women’s monastery later transformed into a tobacco manufactory and subsequently into a reception center in the post-war period, is a site deeply connected to the histories of generations of women who lived or worked there (nuns, cigar workers, refugees and displaced women). As custodian of this memory, the museum now invites new women artists to develop contemporary practices capable of engaging with the site’s layered history and opening new perspectives on the present

he outcomes of the research will be included in the Museo Sant’Orsola’s 2027 cultural programme and presented to the public during a four-month opening period, contributing to the dissemination and enhancement of the residency projects at both national and international level.

ELIGIBILITY AND RESIDENCY CONDITIONS

The call is open to:
– women artists
– available to stay in Florence for the entire duration of the residency
– with a good knowledge of Italian, English, or French

The selected artists will be hosted in Florence for a two-month consecutive residency period between October and December 2026. During the residency, the artists will benefit from:

– a research and production grant of €1,700 net per month
– accommodation and workspace at Villa Il Palmerino, cultural partner of the project
– curatorial and technical support
– financial support for the artistic production of the project

During the residency, at least one open studio or public presentation of the work in progress is planned.

For more information and to learn about the application procedures, download the full call

Applications must be sent by 30 March 2026 to info@museosantorsola.it, indicating in the subject line: “Application – Calliope Arts and the Levett Collection / FAMM for Museo Sant’Orsola Residency”.

Download Open Call

PAST EXHIBITIONS

THE ROSE THAT GREW FROM CONCRETE

05 September 2025 – 04 January 2026

With : Chiara Bettazzi, Bottega Bianco Bianchi Scagliole, Mireille Blanc, Bianca Bondi, Davidovici & Ctiborsky, Marion Flament, Federico Gori, Beate Höing, Flora Moscovici, Chris Oh, Elise Peroi, Clara Rivault, Shubha Taparia

Curated by Morgane Lucquet Laforgue

One of the main ambitions of the Museo Sant’Orsola is to bring the site’s past to light through contemporary art. Ahead of its official opening scheduled for 2028, the museum organised a series of exhibitions before the start of the major restoration works of the former Sant’Orsola convent. Since 2023, contemporary artists have been invited to engage with the monument and its history by creating site-specific works. With each exhibition, visitors have been able to take part in the early stages of rediscovering and reviving a place that had remained inaccessible for far too long. The original works created for each exhibition are subsequently presented to the museum’s acquisitions committee, gradually contributing to the development of its permanent contemporary art collection.

The Rose That Grew From Concrete (5 September 2025 – 4 January 2026)
Chiara Bettazzi, Bottega Bianco Bianchi Scagliole, Mireille Blanc, Bianca Bondi, Davidovici & Ctiborsky, Marion Flament, Federico Gori, Beate Höing, Flora Moscovici, Chris Oh, Elise Peroi, Clara Rivault, Shubha Taparia

The third and final edition of the exhibitions before the official launch of the renovation works, this group show brings together fourteen Italian and international artistic voices who engage with the space of the former convent not only to recount its transformations, but also to symbolically tend to its wounds.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by a celebrated poem by the African American artist Tupac Amaru Shakur (1971–1996): the image of the rose growing from concrete, evoked in his verses, becomes a metaphor for the ability to be reborn despite adversity just as the former monastery of Sant’Orsola has done through the various stages of its history. Through site-specific works created using different languages and materials, each artist reinterprets the cycles of occupation, construction, and abandonment that have shaped the place. Many of the techniques employed are rooted in traditional crafts—such as embroidery, scagliola, and gold leaf—but are reimagined through a contemporary lens. Sant’Orsola thus enters a new season of regeneration, with art as its driving force.

The initiative is carried out with the support of Calliope Arts, with the contribution and patronage of the Metropolitan City of Florence, with the support of the Nuovi Mecenati Foundation, and with the contribution of the Tuscany Region – Giovanisì – Toscanaincontemporanea2025.

Emanuele Caprioli ACQUILUNIO.
In dialogue with the work of Andrea Marescalchi

05 December 2025 – 04 January 2026

Curated by Valeria d’Ambrosio

Acquilunio originates from the research and production residency carried out by Emanuele Caprioli (Milan, 1993) between July and October 2025 at the Andrea Marescalchi Archive in Florence. Caprioli’s first solo exhibition in Florence, the project explores gesture, mark and perception through two site-specific installations conceived for Sant’Orsola, where water and light become elemental forces travelling through time, evoking subtle memories and natural phenomena.

Acquilunio is part of the project Uno, qualcuno, chicchessia: sulle tracce di Andrea Marescalchi, curated by Valeria D’Ambrosio and TAB – Take Away Bibliographies, and stems from Caprioli’s encounter with the work of Andrea “Bobo” Marescalchi (1954–2015), an artist who collaborated extensively with Alighiero Boetti before developing his own research on mark-making, ink and calligraphy. The exhibition will also feature two historical works by Marescalchi, rarely accessible to the public: a small work on paper from the mid-1990s and a large canvas created in the last years of his life, both testifying in different ways to the continuity of gesture over time.

Supported by Toscanaincontemporanea2025 and promoted by the Tuscany Region, the exhibition is part of the broader programme The Rose That Grew From Concrete and can be visited on the same days and during the same opening hours, with the regular admission ticket.

RIVELAZIONI
June – October 2024

Juliette Minchin and Marta Roberti enchant the ancient monastery of Sant’Orsola
Curated by Morgane Lucquet Laforgue

The second edition of the “exhibitions on site” featured the French sculptor Juliette Minchin and the Italian designer Marta Roberti, both invited to create site-specific works for Sant’Orsola. In the space of the first convent church, Minchin created Souffle (Breath), an installation of wax veils and draperies that seemed to restore the lost breath of the Baroque convent. In the former apothecary, she presented La veillée aux racines (Vigil with Roots): wax panels with wicks that, when lit daily, burned slowly, giving life to a ritual of light and metamorphosis.

Roberti, inspired by the stories of the saints that once circulated within the convent walls, created Aure, a series of large drawings covering the walls of the second church like frescoes re-emerging from the plaster, where figures of women and animals subverted traditional religious iconography. Her research continued in the underground spaces of Sant’Orsola – opened to the public for the first time – with a group of works on carbon paper, in which the images, incised into the black surface, emerged from darkness like sudden revelations. The encounter between the two artists transformed the convent into a dreamlike landscape, where past and imagination intertwined in a visionary weave.

OLTRE LE MURA DI SANT’ORSOLA
June, September 2023

Sophia Kisielewska-Dunbar and Alberto Ruce tell forgotten stories
Curated by Morgane Lucquet Laforgue

The first exhibition of the future museum, Beyond the Walls of Sant’Orsola, involved two young contemporary artists who created an art project inspired by the women who once inhabited the place. In the space of the former church, the street artist Alberto Ruce created a suspended installation inspired by the story of Lisa Gherardini, the presumed model of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, who spent her last years of life in the convent of Sant’Orsola. In the former monastic apothecary, on the other hand, he painted large murals evoking the pharmaceutical activity practiced by the nuns in that very place.

Sophia Kisielewska-Dunbar’s work enters into dialogue with the dispersed heritage of Sant’Orsola and questions the condition of women within the walls of convents. Her oil-oncanvas triptych, titled Noli me tangere, reinterprets and actualizes the traditional iconography of saints’ martyrdom through a female lens. The painting, set up in the second convent church, opens a new space of encounter between the ancient and the contemporary.

TOUR DE FRANCE
promessa e supplizio
June – July 2024

Affiche jaune et noire au design abstrait.

Italian champions of the Grand Boucle
Curated by Valeria d’Ambrosio

On the occasion of the Florence Grand Départ (29 June 2024), the Sant’Orsola Museum hosted an exhibition dedicated to the seven Italian champions who have marked the history of the Tour de France: Ottavio Bottecchia, Gino Bartali, Fausto Coppi, Gastone Nencini, Felice Gimondi, Marco Pantani, and Vincenzo Nibali. Through a selection of 37 photographs from the archives of L’Équipe (1946 to the present day), as well as materials from Excelsior (1910–1940) and Le Miroir des Sports (1920–1945), together with historical films from the Gaumont-Pathé Archives and the Istituto Luce, the exhibition retraced nearly ninety years of the “Grande Boucle”, capturing the exploits of Italian riders from 1924 to 2014.

Alongside the images, period objects—exceptional loans from the Ottavio Bottecchia Museum and the Gino Bartali Cycling Museum—offered a more tangible and personal dimension to the race: the jersey, glasses, and watch of Bottecchia, the first Italian to wear the yellow jersey from start to finish, as well as Bartali’s bicycle and trophy, witnesses to his epic victories. A journey that, between promise and ordeal, evoked the collective imagination built over decades around France’s most legendary race.

The Museum

The former convent of Sant’Orsola and its restoration project

Located in the heart of Florence, in the historic district of San Lorenzo, the Sant’Orsola complex, which covers over 17,000 m², has undergone various transformations and remained an inaccessible site for over 40 years. Originally a Benedictine convent in the early 14th century, it became a Franciscan convent in 1435. Since 1542, it has housed the tomb of Monna Lisa Gherardini, the presumed model for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. With an edict in 1810, Napoleon definitively put an end to its function as a convent, marking the beginning of the dispersal of its artistic heritage. In 1818, the historic building was radically altered and converted into a tobacco factory (until 1940). After the Second World War, the building was again transformed, and for several decades became a reception center for refugees. In the 1980s, the site was purchased by the Ministry of Finance, which intended to use it as a military barracks. Work on the site was quickly halted, and since then, the disfigured complex, covered in reinforced concrete, has been abandoned. In 2020, the Metropolitan City of Florence launched a competition for its rehabilitation, which was won by the French group Artea.

Museo Sant’Orsola, A museum in the making

The museum will officially open to the public in 2028, once the redevelopment works of the entire Sant’Orsola complex have been completed.

Its mission is twofold: to enhance the tangible and intangible heritage of the former convent and to contribute to the creation of new cultural heritage in dialogue with the challenges of our time. At the crossroads of historical, archaeological and fine arts traditions, this new cultural hub in Florence will first and foremost be a centre for contemporary art. With its own collection of 21st-century works, it is also conceived as a space for experimentation and artistic creation.
The permanent display will present testimonies from the past alongside those of the present, fostering a productive dialogue between memory and contemporary perspectives that encourages a critical reflection on our time and opens new horizons for the future.

The museum is currently managed by the association Amici del Museo Sant’Orsola. From 2028 onwards it will also receive support from the Artea Storia Foundation, a non-profit foundation currently being established by the company Artea, which manages the entire Sant’Orsola complex for the next fifty years and is responsible for the redevelopment works. The foundation aims to support contemporary artists, notably through commissions and residency programmes.

The rehabilitation project of the former convent of Sant’Orsola

Artea has imagined a project for Sant’Orsola that is deeply rooted in the Florentine context, transforming the former convent into a multifunctional hub combining arts, crafts, education and social life. The proposal brings together public and private functions, integrating a higher education establishment, a toy library, a museum offering exhibitions and cultural activities, as well as a restaurant, cafés, three public courtyards, craftsmen’s and artists’ studios. An innovative model of urban regeneration, designed to make Sant’Orsola a place for living, sharing, conviviality and singular experiences.

General information

The former convent of Sant’Orsola is located in the heart of Florence, near the main station of Santa Maria Novella, close to the Mercato Centrale (central market), the Basilica of San Lorenzo and the Medici Chapels, and less than 5 minutes walk from the Dome.

PRESS CONTACT : Emmanuel Egretier
Emmanuel.egretier@yahoo.fr