Carrara Academy

Type:

Luoghi della cultura; Ente/Istituzione

Category:

Art museums

This institution was the result of the decision taken by Count Giacomo Carrara (1714-1796) to create a school of fine arts with adjoining picture gallery in accordance with the Enlightenment idea of spreading culture through society. On his death, the Carrara Academy grew so quickly that new neoclassical premises were designed by Simone Elia and completed in 1810. The 19th century saw only one important purchase, namely the collection of the Venetian patrician Orsetti (1804), and the two major bequests (Lochis in 1866 and Morelli in 1891), but also the only great dispersal of works, by public auction in 1835. The academy was well established in its role as a municipal museum when it underwent its first modern reorganization, based no longer on the collections of illustrious connoisseurs for which it provided a setting but on chronological and regional criteria (Corrado Ricci, 1912 and 1930). The new arrangement of 1955 (G.A. Dell'Acqua and Fernanda Wittgens) remained in place until the ongoing closure for renovation work (2008). The collections now comprise about 1,800 paintings, 3,000 drawings, 8,000 prints and 80 sculptures (plus the 46 important works of the Federico Zeri bequest of 1998) as well as works of the minor arts, furniture, a library with many volumes once owned by Giacomo Carrara, and materials from the academy (paintings, drawings, cartoons and plaster sculptures).