Patrimonio culturale dell'Emilia-Romagna

In recent years the monastery complex of Santi Nicolò e Domenico, home of the Art Gallery, has undergone careful and complex restructuring in order to house the Imola Civic Museums in a single location. At the moment, only the Municipal Art Gallery can be visited. It has a collection of about one hundred works, mainly from the Bologna area, produced between the 15th and the 21st century. At a later date further collections will be added, including one of old drawings, medieval and modern ceramics, coins and medals, as well as stone items. The new exhibition area will include the reopening of the historic Giuseppe Scarabelli Natural History Museum, a fine example of a nineteenth-century museum, which for some years has been closed to visitors with the exception of a section specially devoted to educational activities. Lastly, the new layout of the Archaeological Museum will reveal the results of more than a century of research carried out in the Imola area. Lastly, the collection of Risorgimento Museum, moved out from the ex-convent of San Francesco in 2001 due to necessary structural works, is now stored and preserved in Musei Civici warehouse.

MUNICIPAL ART GALLERY The first part of the Municipal Art Gallery dates back to the Iconoteca of illustrious Imola characters, a collection of portraits put together by the Imola doctor Luigi Angeli 1819 and which can still be seen in the upper corridor of the Municipal Library., However the real date of birth of the Art Gallery was in 1868 when the Mayor Giovanni Codronchi Argeli collected in one place all the paintings and sculptures owned by the municipality, by private citizens and by the suppressed religious orders, and opened it to visitors on a daily basis for about ten years. The present exhibition in the former monastery of San Domenico dates back to 1988 and proposes the collection, which comprises works of various periods and schools, in different sizes and qualities, in a layout that links the works in the museum to the heritage of buildings and artistic documents in the town. The tour begins with a group of fine fifteenth-century frescoes; particularly worthy of note are the St. Christopher by Tommaso Cardello, dated 1469, the Madonna enthroned with the Child and St. Anthony by Cristoforo Scaletti and the interesting fragment of the Annunciation, brought to light during restoration work in the monastery of San Domenico. After a long gallery containing a series of reproductions of paintings that were once in Imola but are now in other towns, having been scattered and sold, there is the old monastery dormitory where pictures with a religious theme are hanging: alongside the works of fifteenth-century artists, such as the “Master of the Imola Triptych” and the Veneto artist Pelosio, hang those of local sixteenth-century painters such as Innocenzo da Imola and Gaspare Sacchi. The Bologna school is represented with the Martyrdom of Saint Stephen by the Mannerist Sanachini, a seventeenth-century work by D.M. Viani and a small painting by Ubaldo Gandolfi. Completing the panorama of works with a sacred theme are some paintings by Lavinia Fontana (1522-1614) and by the Forlivese artist G. Zampa (1731-1808). The monks’ small cells now contain works from private collections; there are two still life scenes by Codino (first decades of the 17th century) and four landscapes painted by G.G. Santi in 1685, the Portrait of a young gentleman by B. Cesi (1556-1629) and a bozzetto by Ubaldo Gandolfi. A series of portraits, including that of two children from the Gommi family by G. Zampa, complete the private art collections. At the end of the tour is the section devoted to contemporary art: here the works of artists from Imola such as A. Montevecchi, T. Dalla Volpe, A. Margotti, M.G. Dal Monte, G. Sartelli are shown alongside works by Guttuso, De Pisis, Casorati, Cantatore, Tilson. The Pinacoteca’s temporary exhibitions are held in the Quadriloggiato, the adjacent San Domenico Cloister, and the nearby Rocca Sforzesca: the Cloister hosted “Nuove presenze nell’arte italiana” (1970), “Intorno al Sessanta. Aspetti dell’arte italiana dopo l’informale 1958-1964” ( 1988), “Andrea Raccagni. L’informale e Liberi 1945-1965” (1993), “Germano Sartelli 1954-1994” (1994), “Salgado. La mano dell’uomo” (1996), “Eccentrica” (1999), “Italo Zuffi. Profilati” (1999), “Sabrina Torelli. Complanari” (2000), “Sabrina Mezzaqui. Pensieri in sottofondo” (2000), “Tonino Gottarelli. La poesia si fa immagine” (2000); the Cloister was also one of the venues for the series of Renato Barilli’s workshops dedicated to Emilia Romagna, Italy, and North America. Other noteworthy exhibitions included “Inchiostro. Selezione artenati 2005”, and the cycle of seminars “Mission: possible” with the artists and public art curators Roberto Daolio, Mili Romano (Cuore di Pietra) on behalf of Ad’a in 2006, which saw the participation, among others, of, Maurizio Bolognini, cocacolascompany, Michael Fliri, Globalgroove, Michela Ravaglia, Antonio Riello, Petar Stanovic, Luca Vitone, Marco di Giovanni and Gian Domenico Sozzi. The year 2009 saw the exhibition "Mario Guido Dal Monte. Dal Futurismo all’Informale, al Neoconcreto, attraverso le avanguardie artistiche del Novecento" curated by Enrico Crispolti, while in 2010 Eva Marisaldi’s project "Cantiere/Cose mai viste" re-visited the parts of the museum that are closed to the public. In 2011 "Concorso piazza. Lo spazio sotto il cielo" took place; this exhibition presented to the public the five project proposals for the new work of art to be displayed in Piazza Matteotti in Imola. Of the five projects (by Alfredo Jaar, Studio Azzurro, Grazia Toderi, Luca Vitone, and Krzysztof Wodiczko), only two (those by Studio Azzurro and Krzysztof Wodiczko) were selected as finalists, and the goal of the exhibition was to allow Imola’s citizens to choose which one was more deserving. The last phase of the project, scheduled for 2012, calls for the creation and inauguration of the new work of art.

GIUSEPPE SCARABELLI NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM The Civic Museum of Natural History and Archaeology was founded around the middle of the 19th century as a joint venture by a group of scientists from Imola, led by the geologist and palaeontologist Giuseppe Scarabelli. The items gathered during digs carried out directly by Scarabelli in the Imola area represent an outstanding part of the museum collections. Although the arrangement of the collection has varied to a certain extent over time, it has not been substantially changed and still maintains a character that most directly reflects the cultural climate of the time in which was formed. The original natural history collections have been integrated with others focussing on archaeology, ethnography and non-European cultures. Despite its compound structure, the museum still shows a strong bias towards natural history, since that was the predominant character of the largest part of its heritage. It contains a number of very valuable collections, in particular the ornithological collection, comprising especially local fauna, the Pirazzoli entomological collection, with more than eight thousand species, the Tassinari herbarium, as well as the interesting and impressive group of ethnographic exhibits from different countries all over the world. The natural history collection also includes numerous stuffed birds, beetles, reptiles, a collection of local, Mediterranean and Red Sea snails, different specimens of minerals, fossils and hard stones from the Italian peninsula and other parts of the world. The geological and paleontological collection put together by Scarabelli is very varied. Among the rocks, fossils and bone remains of major scientific importance there are specimens of the various geological formations of the Marches and the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines, flora and fossil fauna from Senegal phyllite, and the famous "Imola Fauna" featuring land mammals of the Quaternary period. Scarabelli’s explorations in the Imola area are linked to the important archaeological collections in the museum. It was he, in fact, who discovered and explored the Cave of King Tiberius and the famous Bronze Age stations at Monte Castellaccio and S. Giuliano di Toscanella. In 1995, on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of Scarabelli’s death, the recovery project began. While fully respecting the plan of its founder, as well as restoring the display it also allowed the scientific revision of the geological and archaeological heritage, the organization of a series of exhibitions and the printing of the collection catalogues.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM. The Archaeological Museum will be housed in the exhibition areas in the San Domenico Museum. The new arrangement will allow the exploitation of the results of over a century of intense research carried out not only in Imola itself, but in the whole strip that lies between the rivers Senio and Sillaro, which in Roman times belonged to the market town Forum Cornelii. The digs have brought to light a considerable amount of material which has enriched the documentation concerning the ancient settlements in the territory, from prehistory to the early Middle Ages. The oldest part of the collection is represented by the material found in the nineteenth century by Giuseppe Scarabelli during his explorations of the Cave of King Tiberius, on Monte Castellaccio and at S.Giuliano di Toscanella, later integrated with further discoveries. In particular the last thirty years have brought to light a number of archaeological finds of great value and interest. This is the case of Pontesanto, where traces of a settlement and an aristocratic tomb of the Villanovan period were found, while the forum and the sacred area of Roman times were found on the site of the former cinema Modernissimo. In addition to these, other finds have helped contribute to an improved knowledge of the past: remains of workshops and commercial premises, traces of urban streets, signs of water resources and public structures, as well as private buildings such as the various examples of Roman domus found in the town centre. Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages are represented by material pertaining to the Church.

MUSEUM OF THE RISORGIMENTO
Inaugurated in 1938 by Romeo Galli, librarian and curator of the civic art collections of the city of Imola, the museum is housed on the ground floor of the former monastery of San Francesco, which is also home to the municipal library and theatre. The core of the collection is composed of materials donated by Count Antonio Domenico Gamberini (1831–1910), patriot and representative at the Assembly of the Romagnas, along with weapons, uniforms, letters, pictorial evidence, notices and proclamations that document the participation of the people of Imola in the events of the Risorgimento. The first room, dedicated to the period of French occupation (1796–1814), documents the life of Pope Pius VII, who was Bishop of Imola. The second room tells the story of the early revolts and the First War of Independence (1821–49) with relics and records of Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, Bishop of Imola and later Pope Pius IX. The third and fourth rooms extensively illustrate Garibaldi’s feats, while the last section of the museum is dedicated to the part played by the people of Imola in the colonial wars and the First World War. Remarkable relics from the Fascist Era and the Second World War are on display as well.