The current exhibition at Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi opened on 28 May and runs until 29 August 2021. It celebrates American art between 1961 and 2001, with over eighty works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Louise Nevelson, Roy Lichtenstein , Claes Oldenburg, Bruce Nauman, Barbara Kruger, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Matthew Barney and Kara Walker, many of them exhibited for the first time in Italy, thanks to the Strozzi collaboration with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

There are iconic works that have marked American art from the beginning of the Vietnam War until 9/11 with everything from Pop Art to Minimalism and Conceptual Art, all represented by a mixture of painting, photography, video art, sculpture and installations. Issues such as the development of consumerism, feminism, civil rights and anti racism are particularly emphasised. The exhibition is a true woke experience and something not quite what one expects to see in Florence at this time but well worth viewing all the same.

I came across the exhibition quite by chance and was able to be one of the first members of the public to see it when it was inaugurated.

Much of what I saw made me nostalgic as it reminded me of my student days when people like Warhol with his plastic fantastic Velvet Underground and Lichenstein with his blown-up comic strips were giving revolutionary perspectives to the UK arts scene.
However, the show moves forwards beyond the swinging sixties to include themes like AIDS, such a relevant subject in these pandemic times, and a special emphasis on the black lives matter movement which is particularly poignant since the Walker Art centre is located in the US city where these issues have come to the fore with the death of George Floyd.

The Minneapolis Art Centre was founded in 1927 by Thomas Barlow Walker, a timber merchant who became one of the world’s ten richest men. In 1971 a new gallery was designed and expanded in 2005. Walker’s original collection was centred mainly on romantic art with a few renaissance pieces (which also included some fakes). I wonder what the founder would think if he could now see the collection of art which his gallery houses. I feel he should at least be glad that the center he created has become one of America’s most visited contemporary art museums.

I have no wish to pontificate on the wonderful opportunity the Minneapolis collection has given Florence to get a taste of our confusing modern creative times. Do remember, however, that Florence’s renaissance artists were once contemporary too! Whether Rothko will be deemed to be as exquisite as Raphael in a future age remains to be seen, nevertheless.

What is without doubt, however, is that the original Strozzi facade was aesthetically a rather calmer experience than the one visitors now encounter with the installation French artist JR has placed over it and which is titled ‘the wound’ alluding to the harm covid19 has also inflicted on the art world. Let us sincerely hope we may be able to see that wound healed in our lifetime.