Pompei Madre materia archeologica

The exhibition is curated by Massimo Osanna and Andrea Viliani, with the curatorial coordination for the modern section by Luigi Gallo. The book features scientific essays and a striking visual comparative narrative between modern and contemporary art and the ancient artefacts and documents on display.
The project is based on the rigorous research from unprecedented institutional collaboration between the Madre and the Archaeological Park / Pompeii Superintendence, creating a dialogue between the superb but little-known and rarely displayed archaeological material from Pompeii – architecture, sculptures, wall paintings, everyday objects, and organic remains – and the masterpieces of modern and contemporary artists, from Johann Joachim Winckelmann to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, François-René de Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël to Stendhal, Le Corbusier to Fausto Melotti, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol to Mark Dion, Jimmie Durham, Allan McCollum and Betty Woodman, Victor Burgin to Luigi Ghirri and Mimmo Jodice, Trisha Donnelly, Haris Epaminonda, Iman Issa, Goshka Macuga, Laure Prouvost to Wade Guyton, Roberto Cuoghi, Mike Nelson, Christodoulos Panayiotou and Adrián Villar Rojas.
The exhibition is deliberately organised in a circular pattern, with the modern and contemporary artwork asserting the value and inspiration of the archaeological finds from Pompeii, in an uninterrupted sequence of juxtaposed space, time and cultures.
The exhibition is an intellectual and archaeological exploration, a rediscovery of Pompeii. It accompanies the visitor on a journey to the past with a triangulation between contemporary, modern and ancient art, where reality is only found in fragments and hypothesis, as it often is in archaeology, just as it is in sci-fi, and art from all eras.