Gabriele d’Annunzio and Modernity: Cultural Initiatives at Vittoriale 2000

Gabriele d’Annunzio and Modernity. This will be the main theme of the cultural initiatives, officially announced after the latest board meeting, that the Vittoriale di Gardone Riviera will propose in the upcoming year.

Thoughts on Modernity and Cultural Initiatives

“The year 2000,” explains Prof. Annamaria Andreoli, president of the Fondazione dannunziana, “will be the year in which d’Annunzio, a precursor of his time and of the imminent modernity which he, despite not experiencing it, had imagined,”.

For example? “D’Annunzio,” continues Prof. Andreoli, “had envisioned cinema as early as 1886, speculating on the artistic possibilities that a sort of ‘moving picture with sound’ could offer.”

The Abruzzese poet anticipated future trends across various fields: he was among the first to recognize the opportunities offered by the automobile and airplane, to support feminism, and to work in advertising (he was the one who named the department store chain “Rinascente” — the Sundial), heralding future developments.”

Exhibition and Events of 2000

The exhibition dedicated to d’Annunzio’s “modernity” will be set up at the Vittoriale in the summer of 2000, from July to September. It will then tour to Milan, followed by Rome and finally to the Quai d’Orsay in Paris (Director Henry Loyrette has recently arrived in Gardone to finalize the last agreements).

The scientific project of the exhibition was developed by the Vittoriale; the display will subsequently be funded by the hosting institutions on a case-by-case basis. The international conference scheduled for June 2-5, 2000, will instead focus on the “dwellings of poetry.”

The Vittoriale has long been part of a European project that involves a kind of itinerary, conceived among the homes of writers turned museums and cultural promotion centers. These are “Places of Memory of Writers,” and Gabriele d’Annunzio’s extreme residence — likely the only one in the world designed and conceived by the host himself with the future public opening in mind — is the only Italian institution included.

Examples of Literary Museums Worldwide

Among others, we recall London’s “Dickens House Museum,” Dublin’s “Joyce Tower,” Médan’s “Musée Émile Zola,” Nantes’s “Musée Jules Verne,” Vulaines-sur-Seine’s “Musée Stéphane Mallarmé,” Grimstad’s “Ibsenhusset,” Kassel’s “Bruder Grimm Museum,” and finally the “Shakespeare Birthplace Trust” in Stratford.

Shakespeare’s birthplace is the only house-museum that surpasses the Vittoriale di Gardone Riviera in visitor numbers (approximately one million annually) — the Vittoriale hosts about 200,000 visitors per year.