This Is Us
The first chapter – The Art Institution – offers a reflection on the history of institutional inclusion. More than 130 years ago, an early attempt was made at making art institutions more inclusive. During his 1889 lecture ‘The Museums of the Future’ at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, George Brown Goode proposed targeting women as a specific group of visitors, although it would take many years before works by female artists were adequately represented in museums. Since then, the art institution as a whole has changed and evolved, especially in recent years, in a process that has moved in step with the social struggle for equal rights.
The second chapter – Living Spaces – focuses on the challenges of a diverse society in which people, organisms and nature converge in their specific spatial needs. This tension lies at the heart of the extraordinary spaces created by architect Francesca Torzo.
The third chapter – Telling Stories – is about the art and act of storytelling itself. How does the media influence the way we ascribe meaning to things? How does news, film, literature, social media and artificial intelligence shape our perception and understanding of the world? This chapter also focuses on the way artists reflect on historical events from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in their work.