Top of the World
A prestigious exhibition space created inside the oldest medieval buildings of the historic center, the thirteenth-century Palazzo dell'Arengo and the fourteenth-century Palazzo del Podestà, which together with Palazzo Garampi, Teatro Galli and the Pescheria overlook Piazza Cavour, the heart of the city. Within this evocative context, affected by a redevelopment project, is home to the San Patrignano Foundation Collection, a collection of donated works by established contemporary artists from the Italian and international scene in constant expansion, launched in 2017 with the curatorial coordination of Clarice Pecori Giraldi. The project does not simply make a contemporary art collection a museum, but connects culture, social, territorial and people development. It is a substantial art collection, with works by Mario Airò, Vanessa Beecroft, Bertozzi & Casoni, Domenico Bianchi, Alessandro Busci, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Maurizio Cannavacciuolo, Loris Cecchini, Jake and Dinos Chapman, RIMINI 2020 Sandro Chia, Roberto Coda Zabetta, George Condo, Enzo Cucchi, Anne de Carbuccia, Thomas De Falco, Nicola de Maria, Gianluca Di Pasquale, Zehra Doğan, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Sam Falls, Flavio Favelli, Giuseppe Gallo, Alberto Garutti, Giorgio Griffa, Shilpa Gupta, Mona Hatoum, Damien Hirst, Carsten Höller, Emilio Isgrò, Giovanni Iudice, William Kentridge, Loredana Longo, Claudia Losi, Iva Lulashi, Ibrahim Mahama, Agnes Martin, Paul McCarthy, Igor Mitoraj, Davide Monaldi, Gian Marco Montesano, Mimmo Paladino, Yan Pei-Ming, Tullio Pericoli, Achille Perilli, Diego Perrone, Luca Pignatelli, Pino Pinelli, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gianni Politi, Matteo Pugliese, Jean Paul Riopelle, Pietro Ruffo, Mario Schifano, Julian Schnabel, Elisa Sighicelli, Andreas Slominski, Ettore Spalletti, Grazia Toderi, Francesco Vezzoli, Velasco Vitali, Silvio Wolf, Xiaongang Zhang.
In addition to the permanent collection, there is also a space dedicated to temporary exhibitions, which aims to be a reference point for contemporary, Italian and international artists. At the entrance, PART houses a site-specific work by British artist David Tremlett, created with the help of young people from the San Patrignano community.
The centrality and importance of the place destined to host the new museum, together with the artistic value of the works exhibited there, suggested, during the planning process, the idea of putting the contemporary in dialogue with the ancient, an inescapable ground for study and creative inspiration. Hence the decision to reserve the place of honor within the exhibition for an extraordinary work, the fresco of the Last Judgment created by the painters of the 14th-century Rimini School under the guidance of its most important exponent: Giovanni da Rimini. The tympanum of the Last Judgment by Giovanni da Rimini will remain placed in the Arengo Hall of the Municipality of Rimini, with the intention of giving a new prominence to that luminous period for the history of art that is the 14th century Riminese School.
At the back of the two medieval buildings is the Sculpture Garden, which fades into the exterior of the Museum. A sculpture garden open to the public, set up according to a design by Luca Cipelletti, which create a path to be experienced both as a museum space and as an Italianate garden where one can relax. The works, as with the entire museum, are donated by artists, collectors, gallery owners or benefactors to the museum, which has an obligation to display them for five years. Today the garden displays works by Chen Zhen, Piotr Uklanski, Kiki Smith, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Giuseppe Penone, Paul Kneale, and Alberto Garutti, and they can be admired either as an additional route to the museum visit or by those who just want to stroll through the greenery (free admission).
