Exhibitions

Rivelazioni

The exhibition Rivelazioni is closed to the public since the 27th of October.

Opening of the next exhibition: September 2025

The catalogues of the exhibitions
Revelations and Beyond the walls of Sant’Orsola
are in italian, french and english.

In anticipation of the official opening scheduled for 2026, Museo Sant’Orsola is organizing a series of exhibitions invading the spaces of the building site, inviting contemporary artists to bring their gaze to the monument and its history. From exhibit to exhibit, visitors will be able to participate in the rebirth of the place and gradually reclaim spaces that have been taken away from the city’s life for too long.

PAST EXHIBITIONS:

 

Rivelazioni (June, october 2024)
Juliette Minchin and Marta Roberti enchant the ancient monastery of Sant’Orsola

The second edition of “exhibitions on site” features the French sculptor and the Italian designer, both called to Sant’Orsola to create site-specific works of art. Juliette Minchin’s poetic wax installations and Marta Roberti’s delicate drawings reveal new aspects of the history of the former convent, taking it into another dimension, that of dreams.

The exhibition can be perceived as a dreamlike journey within the walls of Sant’Orsola.

 

Oltre le mura di Sant’Orsola (June, September 2023)
Sophia Kisielewska-Dunbar and Alberto Ruce tell forgotten stories

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-on-canvas 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, Italian champions of the Grand Boucle (June 28 – July 21)

The exhibition was conceived as a tribute to the seven Italian cyclists who have won the Tour de France through a selection of historical photographs, archival films, and vintage objects, including exceptional loans from the Ottavio Bottechia museum and the Florentine museum of cycling Gino Bartali.

The artists

Juliette
Minchin

Juliette Minchin

A graduate of the National School of Decorative Arts in Scenography and the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, Juliette Minchin is a visual artist fascinated by light, time and the changing states of the materials she works with. Juliette Minchin’s favourite material is wax, which she uses in her often ephemeral sculptures, drawings and installations, exploring notions of transformation, disappearance and rebirth.

The artworks for the exhibition Rivelazioni (28th June – 27th October 2024)

For the former convent of Sant’Orsola Juliette Minchin has designed an installation that unfolds around the remains of the first church.
Her drapes and veils of wax envelop the architecture : the back of the room and the windows come to life, as if breathed through by a new breath of life. In her own way, the artist seems to be resuscitating the convent’s theatrical and fleeting Baroque past, of which there has been no trace since the 19th century.

In the convent’s former pharmacy on the other hand, the artist staged her vigil with roots. Around the room’s imposing pillars, Juliette Minchin has hung panels covered in wax and wicks that are lit and melt every day, offering visitors the spectacle of silent, ever-changing creativity. The shapes, light and scent of burning wax offer visitors a spellbinding sensory experience, a reference to the liturgical and healing rituals once practiced in this place.

Marta
Roberti

Marta Roberti

With a degree in Philosophy from the University of Verona and a diploma in Film and Video at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brera, Marta Roberti is first and foremost a drawer. She makes drawings, often largescale, on special papers (carbon paper, Gampi paper) that she assembles, cuts out, and reassembles to create her compositions. Her art establishes a dialogue between East and West and is a constant research about what man considers other than himself : nature, animals, women.

The artworks for the exhibition Rivelazioni (28th June – 27th October 2024)

Inspired by the stories of saints that circulated within the convents walls, Marta Roberti conceived Aure : a series of immense and delicate drawings that cover the church of Sant’Orsola and seem to emerge from the surface of the walls like fragments of rediscovered frescoes. Her works overturn traditional religious iconography and explore the relationship between the divine, the feminine and the animal. The artist transforms the former ecclesiastical hall into a place of contemplation and personal meditation, offering us her imagined version of a monastic cell. The viewer is invited to explore different worlds in which there are no longer any boundaries or distinctions between living beings.

Marta Roberti’s reflections continue in the semi-darkness of the basement, where a selection of works on graphite paper are suspended and backlit (sometimes animated by projected stop-motion drawings). They appear as luminous epiphanies, secrets that are gradually revealed.

Sophia
Kisielewska-Dunbar

Sophia Kisielewska-Dunbar (born in 1990) is an artist and an art historian based in London. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2013 and worked for several years as a researcher for Day & Faber, a London-based fine art dealer specialising in European drawings. Her artistic practice combines a plurality of techniques from painting to embroidery, soft sculpture, drawing and performance. Her works often aim to open a dialogue between past and present and one of her principal focuses is the representation of women in Western art. Sophia has participated in numerous fairs and group shows in London and abroad. In Spring 2024 she will present her first solo show in Paris.

The first artist in residence at Sant’Orsola

From June 15 to September 15 – 2022, Sophia worked as the first artist in residence for the future Sant’Orsola Museum in Florence.

In Florence, Sophia worked in two ateliers outside the walls of Sant’Orsola: firstly in the Spazio Schola of the Accademia Italiana; then, thanks to a cultural partnership, she moved to the Porta Romana artistic high school.

Her work started with the research and study of the fragmentary heritage of Sant’Orsola. Sophia tried to immerse herself in the visual culture of a nunnery. Then, she carried out a period of pictorial experimentation which led her to the conception of two artistic projects. These projects, one monumental, Noli me Tangere, and one in miniature, Rewriting Sant’Orsola, will be purchased by the Museum to form the first nucleus of its contemporary art collection.

Alberto
Ruce

Alberto Ruce (born in 1988) is a Sicilian artist living in Marseille. His self-taught artistic path began with graffiti. In 2009 he moved to Paris where he took courses in drawing, painting and perspective at the Atelier des Beaux-Arts, getting closer and closer to figurative art.
In 2012 he took part in the group show GRAFF in Luxembourg ; four years later he organized his first solo exhibition 433’’ at Gadam Gallery in Messina. Since then he has joined numerous exhibitions and festivals in both Italy and France. Next summer he will display Transumanze, a research project on micro-migrations started in 2019 together with videomaker Carla Costanza, in San Marco D’Alunzio and Palermo.

His art remains linked to muralism. His murals, painted tone on tone with shades of gray and white, come to life between the cracks in the walls as dreamlike apparitions. His murals can be seen in various European cities such as Paris, Marseille, Brignoles, Messina, Palermo, Mostar, Athens and, today, also in Florence.

From March to May 2023, Alberto Ruce was involved in the project Ephemeral Museum; his works are ‘ephemeral’ in that they could be transformed or even erased by future renovations of the former convent of Sant’Orsola.

The Museum

The future Sant’Orsola Museum, expected to open in 2025, will be managed by a private nonprofit foundation created by Artea.

The museum will have the dual purpose of preserving the memory of the place, but also of promoting contemporary artistic creation, inviting established or emerging artists to dialogue with the traces of its past.

The museum space will be that of the old 14th-century church (255.60 m² ).  A glass floor will show the remains of ancient Renaissance tombs discovered in 2011-2014, including that of Lisa Gherardini, the presumed model for the Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

Enhancing the historical and artistic heritage of SantOrsola

The historical and artistic heritage of the monastery was confiscated during its suppression (1810).

Part of that heritage has merged into other Florentine museums or repositories. Sant’Orsola Museum will seek to recover and enhance works of art from the former monastery through restoration campaigns and loans.

Building our art collections

That part of the heritage that has been lost will be evoked through the gaze of contemporary artists, each with their own means of expression. The museum intends to build up its own collection of contemporary art, asking artists to create original works inspired by the place and elements of its history.

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.

 

OPENING DAYS AND HOURS

Close to the public.

Opening of the next exhibition: September 2025

Official opening of the museum in 2026.

address

Former convent of Sant'Orsola,
Entrance via Guelfa,21
50129 Firenze

Ticket:

5€

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