The former royal palace of King Roger II in the 1100’s, Palazzo dei Normanni is one of the most famous sights in Palermo. Dating back to the 9th century, the palace owes its current appearance to the embellishments realized by the Normans: covered in dazzling Byzantine mosaics, the Arab-Norman architecture is a symbol of the political and cultural union operated by the Normans. Of course, don’t miss the stunning Palatine Chapel. What I loved about the Palazzo is it’s approach to contemporary art. Right now, there’s an intriguing Ryan Mendoza retrospective, presenting the artist’s ouevre which counterbalances old master techniques with modern-day themes. Then, in another palace space, there’s an amazing temporary exhibition featuring contemporary art classics: Jeff Koons, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Zhang Hong Mei and Andres Serrano. The old meets the new.
Piazza Indipendenza 1
Photos by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
Less well-known than its prestigious neighbours (like Noto or Ragusa), but just as fascinating and beautiful, Scicli is well worth a visit if you’re ever in southeastern Sicily. It sits in a gorge just a few miles from the long sandy beaches of Sampieri and Donnalucata and is overlooked by a towering rocky mass on which the Church of San Matteo sits. The town shares much of its history with the other UNESCO Heritage Site towns of Val di Noto, most specifically the fateful earthquake of 1693, during which over 3,000 of the town’s population died. Scicli, like the towns in the area, was totally rebuilt in pure Sicilian Baroque style. Today, it is a joy to wander around. Scicli’s history, of course, long predates 1693, and it is thought to have taken its name from its founders, the Sicels, one of the three main tribes that inhabited Sicily before the arrival of the Greek colonists. Like the rest of the island, it was passed from one invading conqueror to another, reaching its economic and cultural peak during the Arab and Norman dominations. The many aristocratic palazzi, such as Palazzo Beneventano, are also fun to see, brimming over with characterful gargoyles, elegant swirls, and decorative fancies. A stroll along Via Francesco Mormina Penna is also strongly recommended as it provides a perfect example of a late Baroque street, harmonious in its wholeness and equal to anything found in the neighbouring towns of greater fame.
Photos by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
If you lose yourself to the streets of Noto, you will find incredible places to visit and fall in love with immediately. The Palazzo Castelluccio, belonging to one of the oldest families in Noto, was built in 1782 by the Marquis di Lorenzo del Castelluccio after the earthquake of 1693 which partly destroyed the region. The façade of the Palace, on Via Cavour, does not have the same baroque style used for the reconstruction of the main buildings of the city, but instead reflects the neo-classical taste popular in the late 18th century, which can be found in the well-preserved frescoes on the ceilings and walls of the main first floor. Four years of work were needed to revive the Palace, respecting its fine finishing and its history. The frescoes were cleaned and restored, the fabrics replaced and the silver wallpaper remade identically. A collection of Italian and Sicilian furniture and paintings restored the atmosphere of an inhabited palace. The music room, chapel and ballroom are testimony the power and good taste of a large aristocratic Sicilian family. After the death of the last Marquis of Castelluccio, the Order of Malta inherited the Palace and kept it for some years. When the current owner took possession in 2011, the Palace had been uninhabited for decades. The main first floor was in a terrible condition, and the doors, windows, paintings and electrical installations all had to be removed and replaced. Today, the colours have been restored to the grand staircase and its vases and extend a magnificent welcome to visitors…
Via Cavour 10
Photos by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is dedicated to 20th century art – and the place itself is an artwork. The museum is the last major project completed by the internationally famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. His long-term preoccupation with creating fluid, open spaces culminated in the design of the glazed upper pavilion of the gallery. With its steel roof and gracefully austere architectural language, the Neue Nationalgalerie not only stands as an icon of modernism, but as testament to a visionary architect. The history of the Neue Nationalgalerie is inextricably linked to the political division of Germany and the city of Berlin that was a consequence of the Second World War. The Nationalgalerie’s collection, originally on display on the Museumsinsel (Berlin’s Museum Island) and later, in the 1920s, also in the Kronprinzen Palais on the boulevard Unter den Linden, was initially managed by the Municipality of Greater Berlin in the immediate post-war years. The founding in 1949 of two German states, with opposed political systems and differing ideologies concerning art and its role in society, marked the end of a unified collection. While the East Berlin Nationalgalerie could stay in its original building (following repairs), in West Berlin there was initially no dedicated space for the collection. Beginning in the late 1940s, the West Berlin authorities took strides to rebuild the collection by setting up a “Gallery of the 20th Century.” Further to this, part of the National Gallery’s original collection of nineteenth-century artwork, found in West Germany after the war, was absorbed the newly established Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation). As these two art collections were to be united, in 1962 Mies van der Rohe was commissioned to design a new museum building to house them both. In September 1965, the architect came to Berlin for the laying of the foundation stone. Two years later he also personally attended the most spectacular construction stage: the hydraulic raising into place of the gigantic steel roof. The building was opened on 15 September 1968 and bore the name Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery). Its name signalled the idea of departing from the old and beginning a new chapter – the cultural rebirth of West Berlin.
The building’s architectural structure has remained virtually unchanged ever since. But the collection of the Neue Nationalgalerie is on-goingly re-visited. It brings together an array of key artworks from the twentieth century by various artists from Europe and North America, including Francis Bacon, Max Beckmann, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Hannah Höch, Rebecca Horn, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Lotte Laserstein, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter, and Andy Warhol. Among the Neue Nationalgalerie’s most famous and iconic works are “Potsdamer Platz” by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, “The Skat Players” by Otto Dix, and “Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue IV” by Barnett Newman. If you’re in Berlin, make sure to visit this amazing place. Plus, the site-specific text installation by Barbara Kruger in the iconic, upper-level hall is on until the end of August!
It’s been a while since I truly enjoyed a Louis Vuitton collection by Nicolas Ghesquière. Something clicked again for me. The collection was a powerful ode to goddesses – of the past, present and future. The resort 2023 line-up – presented in La Jolla, California – was a wonderful reminder of how forever-forward this Parisian designer is.
His two post-pandemic Paris shows and the one shown in USA, form a sort of trilogy, starting in the 19th century, making a pitstop in the ’90s of his own post-adolescence, and zooming off into a utopian future. At all three Ghesquière has set out to break down dress codes and build up complex silhouettes. And here’s another Vuitton epic: Ghesquière has made a tradition of staging his cruise shows at architectural marvels. John Lautner’s Bob Hope House in Palm Spring, Oscar Niemeyer’s Niteroi Museum in Rio de Janeiro, I. M. Pei’s Miho Museum outside Kyoto, and now the Louis Kahn-designed Salk Institute in La Jolla. Kahn’s masterpiece, its monumentality is matched by its humanity, but Ghesquière was as switched on by its setting as by its Brutalist concrete. “The guest of honor for the show is the sun,” he said poetically. “The elements are invited.” This was a collection about playing with those elements. He chose metallic fabrics and embellishments that reflected the setting sun, some as glassy as mirrors, and other materials that offered protection from it, wrapping long swathes of linen, for example, around the head and across the body. Other pieces lifted design details from water sports; the airbrushed colors of half tops and boxy short skirts apparently came from jet skis. Ghesquière is a designer whose collections are minutely pored over and studied, and some of these gestures looked like callbacks to earlier seasons, only amplified, maximal where he used to be minimal and streamlined. The show began and ended with a bang. The opening dresses, one more voluminous than the next, were cut from robust jacquards (he compared them to molten lava) that looked like they really could’ve repelled enemy fire. The effect was almost stately, but for the soft-soled sneakers they padded out on. At the finish came a trio of jackets with enormous sculpted collars as shiny as armor perched above tinsel sleeves. These were extraordinary: imaginative and otherworldy. Ghesquière was firing on all creative cylinders here, creating a positive feedback loop. You left wanting to be one of his Amazon superheroine goddesses.
Design & Culture by Ed 