Adaptive Reuse in Italy: Carlo Scarpa’s Museums

Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 at 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

• In-person event
• The Pit Architecture Building, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

TOPIC

During the 1960s, the museography sector in Italy witnessed a fertile renewal period. A generation of architects, working in partnership with museum directors, set about transforming several historical monumental complexes in Italian city centres into exhibition spaces.

Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978) emerged as a critical figure in the field of adaptability in Italy in the context of the museographic interventions by Franco Albini and Ignazio Gardella. Scarpa, who preferred “to create museums rather than skyscrapers,” was extremely active in this field. For over 30 years, he designed about 60 art exhibitions and museums.

Scarpa was responsible for the layout of several museums, adapting them according to the current needs of the time. Such was the case with some of the spaces of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, the Museum Gipsoteca Antonio Canova in Possagno,  and the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona.

Museum Gipsoteca Antonio Canova

Castelvecchio Museum

Alba Di Lieto

Alba Di Lieto is an architect, author, and scholar. Until last year, she served as executive architect of the Directorate of the Civic Museums of Art and Monuments of Verona, where her career spanned four decades. She was also head curator of the Carlo Scarpa Archive at the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona from 1989 to 2022.

Currently, Di Lieto teaches interior architecture and exhibition design at the Mantua campus of the Polytechnic University of Milan.

She has collaborated on the restoration, conservation, and design of Verona’s museums, including the Archaeological Museum at the Roman Theatre, the Towers of Castelvecchio, and the new wing at the G.B. Cavalcaselle Museum of Frescoes at Juliet’s Tomb in Verona. 

Di Lieto has designed 60 exhibitions and collaborated on Carlo Scarpa exhibitions in Paris, London, Edinburgh, Geneva, Verona, and Montreal. 

She is the author and editor of several books on Carlo Scarpa, the website www.archiviocarloscarpa.it, and the Carlo Scarpa drawings catalogue for the Museo di Castelvecchio.