Museum of contemporaneous art

DECEMBER 1998

............................Carlo Franza
..

International Museum
of Contemporaneous Art
Over there, in the farthest Salento, the utmost edge of Italy, a land between the Ionian sea and the Adriatic, in that very ancient strip of land of the promontory called de finibus where there's also a

sanctuary dedicated to Virgin Mary, where very ancient populations as the Messapi have left witness even behind the cemetery of Alessano, just along this way, in the town that was the birth place of the bishop Antonio Vello, a renowned representative of the Italian Church , at Alessano, a little town of the Leuca Cape in the province of Lecce, has aroused the MIMAC, that is the first Marian International museum of Contemporaneous Art.
Its placed in the square, dedicated to the same bishop, in front of the eighteenth century cathedral, related to the name of Palma the Young.

The Marian international Museum is related too to the foundation entitled to the Italian bishop, dead few years ago, and presided over by professor Donato Valli, former University of Lecce rector, renown Italian literature historian, and Don Tonino's personal friend (as already every one called him lovingly the prophet of peace since, when he was president of the Pax Christi, yet ill, he wanted to be present at the peace walk at Sarajevo.
Man and shepherd, animated by the real Franciscan spirit, he who was tertiary Franciscan , attached to his land, near to the defeat's and troubled' world, the sufferers, to the world of those who are hungry and thirsty of justice, to the world of those who are the last.
Monsignor Bello has left behind him unforgettable teachings, he has written again the Gospel in the nowadays light, and has had Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, woman of our times as he has called her also in a book of texts issued by the Paoline Edizioni, as the faithful companion of a whole life. A well-read man, poet he himself, learned in theology, parish priest of Tricase before being bishop at Molfetta, Monsignor Bello has left unforgettable pages also about art, its function, about the sacred art that educates God's populations. Well then, since the attachment to the Virgin, here it is the permanent open exposition entitled Queen Virgin Mother at the Mimac, with 47 donations of Italian and foreign artists that have fostered the Italian museum, reference point for the whole international Christianity, and placed just where nowadays it can be said there is the East gate. That is the place where the world destitutes, Kurdish, Albanian, Kosovar, land. Alessandro-says -Valli is already an icon of the hope. And keeps on, explaining how the museum is related to the holy bishop; he says: about Don Tonino's life, all vertical for holiness and humility, the moment touched me the most is the one of the last day on the earth, that of his death. He implored, with the remaining strength of his utmost will, that, at the walls of his room became his little Calvary, to all the walls, to hang an effigy, a picture of Our Lady.

Furthermore: it seemed the utmost delirium, instead it was the most conscious act of faith: he simply wanted, wherever he turned his eyes, in the rare and painful movements on his side the disease let him do, to look at the benevolent face of the Divine Creature for the last pray, to definitively abandon himself in her womb. Since the idea of the arousing of this museum, the

meaning of this initiative whose project of bringing there 350 works of the most renown names of the Italian and foreign art, will be ended for the 2000 Jubilee.
Meanwhile the donations are nearly 50 for a total value of nearly 800 millions.
Very renowned artists has painted and sculptured unforgettable works, of a universal beauty and value, they have interpreted the Virgin of Nazareth , her face, her image. So here there are the Mary's faces in the Christian universe.
Here is the Virgin as a rose, Our Lady of the Annunciation, mother, Our Lady of Sorrows, helper, light , and also fons, vitae cisterna, caritas, chastity. Formerly in the Laude Cortonesi of the XIII century some virtues of Mary are listed, like faith, hope, richness, lightness, strength . The Virgin had already inspired renowned painters belonging to our century, as Severini, Rouault, Garbari, Chagall, Sironi, Manzù, Greco.

And at Loreto, in the basilica of the Holy House there are 43 donations of contemporaneous artists about the subject of the house transported by flying angels, before landing over the Loreto hill.
Among the works in the Mimac at Alessano, here it is Salvatore Fiume, Ernesto Treccani, Ibrahim Kodra, t he last living postcubist who is just this year 80 years old and who will be involved by the next autumn into a big an tho logical exposition, Luigi Guerricchio, the painter of the silence, Walter Lazzaro, Alessandro Nastasio since ever devoted to the sacred and already present in many Italian churches and basilicas, Vito

Melotto, Gianni Brusamolino, Natale Addamiano, Floriano Fabbri, a considerable group of artists from the Brera academy among whom Giansisto Gasparini and Alberto Venditti, and from the Lecce Academy among whom its director the sculptor Salvatore Spedicato, some young talents of the Italian painting among whom Marisa Settembrini and Tindaro Calia, Emilio Belotti and Salvatore Sava.
In all these works the glances of the Virgin reveal an out of common artistic surge, give the measure of what a light can spring up from a face.
Finally in Puglia a museum has aroused bringing a double observation possibility, that is works that bring inside the legibility of the sacred, but also that here in the south is already active a pole of interest round the art of these years,

contemporaries oriented; a museum that finally is a reference point for all the southern culture, for the world of the Academies and Universities; an attracting pole that will bring to a little frontier village prestige and merits.
Alessano that had the apostle of peace as Don Tonino, who nowadays in the Museum Foundation, entitled to him keeps on giving culture and solidarity messages.

Leadership Medica^®

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