Louise Bourgeois in Florence at the Innocenti Museum and the Museo Novecento

The Museo degli Innocenti and the Museo Novecento strengthen their collaboration with Louise Bourgeois in Florence, two exhibitions - Cell XVIII (Portrait) and Do Not Abandon me - that will open to the public from 22 June until 20 October 2024. The project brings the artist's works to Florence for the first time, building a meaningful relationship of osmosis between her creations and the exhibition context.

Louise Bourgeois (Paris, 1911 - New York, 2010) had a childhood marked by a complicated relationship with her family, which resulted in traumatic experiences that were one of the main sources of inspiration for her art. From intimate drawings to large-scale installations in a variety of materials, including wood, marble, bronze and fabric, Bourgeois expressed psychological states through a visual vocabulary of formal and symbolic equivalents. The scale and materials of her works vary as much as the forms, which oscillate between abstraction and figuration. Emotions such as loneliness, jealousy, anger and fear are the threads running through her work. Her almost obsessive writing, as well as drawing, remained central forms of expression throughout her life.

Cell XVIII (Portrait) presents a work with a strong visual impact resonating with the Institute's history and collection: an installation chosen by Philip Larratt-Smith with Arabella Natalini, Scientific Director of the Innocenti Museum, and Stefania Rispoli, Curator of the Museo Novecento.

In Italian the word “cell” in the title can be translated to mean a prison cell or a body cell. Thus, the English term refers as much to the elementary unity of all living organisms as to the condition of isolation, separation and confinement that characterises a prison or a monastery.

The cell on display at the Innocenti Museum is located within the Art Route, which unites the gallery above Brunelleschi's loggiato and the rooms of the Coretto delle Preghiere (nurses’ prayer room) that overlook the old Church of Santa Maria degli Innocenti. The subject in Cell XVIII (Portrait) seems to reinterpret the iconography of the Madonna of Mercy, a recurring theme in some of the most emblematic works of the collection and a powerful representation of the Institute’s vocation for hospitality. The image brings to mind the large female community made up of both the girls taken in and brought up here, and the people who, carrying out various tasks, have contributed to making the condition of women, and mothers in particular, part of the Institute’s mission alongside the promotion of the rights of children and adolescents that is now identified with the Florentine organisation.

Do Not Abandon me, the exhibition curated by Philip Larratt-Smith and the Museo Novecento's Artistic Director Sergio Risaliti in collaboration with The Easton Foundation, will practically occupy the former Leopoldine building between the ground and first floor rooms.

Almost one hundred works by Louise Burgeois will be on display, with many on paper, including gouaches and drawings, created in the 2000s, as well as sculptures of various sizes, in fabric, bronze, marble and other materials. Of particular note, Spider Couple, one of the artist's most famous and emblematic creations, which will be installed in the courtyard of the Museum. The title, Do Not Abandon me, refers to Bourgeois's lifelong fear of abandonment. In this case it refers to the mother-child dyad, which constitutes the model of all future relationships.