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# 62 • JUNE 12 , 2015
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ITALIAN ART:
Accademia Carrara
By Enrico De Iulis
The renovating wave of Milan
EXPO is reaching also its neighborhood. The Accademia
Carrara of Bergamo reopens
after eight years of 11 million
euro restoration and modernization. The story of this important museum begins in
1783, when Giacomo Carrara,
a patron based in Bergamo,
founded an academy (Accademia Carrara) with the intent
of supporting and promoting
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Bergamo’s pictorial tradition.
Twelve years later, a Pinacoteca containing mainly Carrara’s
art collection rose alongside
the Accademia.
houses the museum. However, a few years later, a grave
shortage of funds dramatically
reduced the main collection:
2000 out of 2500 paintings
were sold through an auction.
At the time of his death, Carra- Several Bergamo’s collectors,
ra left the Pinacoteca to a com- such as Guglielmo Lochis, Giomission of nobles who would vanni Morelli, and the great art
have managed it. In 1810, the historian Federico Zeri, gave
commission asked the archi- an important help to the Actect Simone Elia to build the cademia with their legacies.
neoclassical building that still In particular, Federico Zeri do-