Luoghi del Contemporaneo (Contemporary Art Venues) is a project endorsed by the Directorate-general for Contemporary creativity of the Ministry of culture, whose aim is to map and promote the network of contemporary art venues in Italy.
The ultimate goal of the project is to create a constantly updated on line platform, as a useful tool to learn about and enhance the italian contemporary art scene.
It’s the first institutional acknoledgement achieved by MiC and devoted to contemporary art scene in Italy.
Venues
Luoghi del Contemporaneo (Contemporary Art Venue) is a public or private place, institutional or independent, with a structured identity as a place dedicated to the promotion, exhibition and valorization of contemporary art.
It has no commercial purpose and can have a collection or be a simple exhibition space. It carries out regular activities and guarantees use from being open to the public. A public space characterized by the presence of a freely usable work of art is also a contemporary place.
Story
A first mapping of the Luoghi del Contemporaneo (Contemporary Art Venues) in Italy, by MiBACT in 2003 and edited by DARC – Directorate-General for Contemporary Art and Architecture, led to the publication of the book I luoghi del contemporaneo. Musei, gallerie, centri d’arte e fondazioni in Italia.
In 2012 the Contemporary Architecture and Art Service of the Directorate-General for the Landscape, Fine Arts, Architecture and Contemporary Art performed an update to the new edition of the guide I luoghi del contemporaneo. Contemporary art venues 2012.
Given the dynamic and changing nature of the contemporary art scene, having an online interactive mapping, founded on a geolocalized and editable online database is becoming a necessity.
Thanks to the new site the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity aims to report the changes occured in the geography of Contemporary Art Venues. At the same time the mapping has been organized according to a typological division which includes, not only well known traditional spaces, but also independent spaces, company museums and a selection of artworks in urban and public spaces.
Mission
Luoghi del contemporaneo (Contemporary Art Venues) is a search platform aiming to contribute to the real-time monitoring of the contemporary art scenario in Italy. It will be implemented and amended based on the dynamics of the current art scene.
Business-driven organisations have not been added to this platform.
The platform contributes to promoting and enhancing contemporary art and artists, and falls within the scope of the Directorate-General.
The working group of Contemporary Art Venues project will remain active as a data observatory, for the analysis of the transformation in the contemporary world scene.
The logo
The Directorate general for Contemporary creativity of the Ministry of culture launched a public selection notice in 2021 for the creation of a logo for the “Contemporary Places” project promoted by the same DG starting from 2018 for the mapping and promotion of the network of places of the contemporary in Italy.
The prize of the amount of €10,000.00 for the creation of a logo for the “Contemporary Places” was aimed at creatives in the age range between 18 and 40, pursuing a dual objective: supporting the creativity of the young generations, in line with the objectives of the DG itself, and at the same time create an indispensable tool for the communication of the entire project, which fully expresses the values of contemporary creativity and which could be identifiable for a vast network.
The logo would have constituted an identifying element of the network of Contemporary Places that could be used in all forms of communication and valorisation. Unpublished, distinctive and original, it should have been versatile and applicable, maintaining its recognisability on different formats and information materials, on any editorial and promotional solution, both paper and digital.
In December 2021 the “A Logo for Contemporary Places” award was awarded to the proposal presented by Giulia Toscano with the following motivation:
“The logo works on the themes of the door, openness and the invitation to the permeability of places. The three elements of the pictogram stylize and schematize the LDC acronym of the platform in an original and creative way, while maintaining the modernist origin of the elements evident. The logo manages to identify in a single image both the idea of openness and invitation to frequent the network of Contemporary Venues and the inclusiveness that is the basis of contemporary artistic research, carried out by the spaces dedicated to such research. From a graphic point of view the logo insists on simplicity and rigor: the theme of the vertical lines repeated rhythmically, but which are beveled and cut off at the ends as a result of the paroxysmal reduction of the characters, creates a sui generis logo accompanied to a chromatic choice that renounces color in favor of black (and in general monochrome), to adapt to every graphic context as well as the many possible declinations foreseen by the author, makes itself immediately recognizable as a brand of an inclusive and versatile Italian contemporary system.