SARAJEVO – Trieste-based, world wide known coffee roaster illycaffè has entered into a partnership with Sarajevo’s Ars Aevi contemporary art museum.
The news was announced on Monday by Trieste Mayor Roberto Cosolini and illy artistic director Carlo Bach in the Bosnia and Herzegovina capital in the presence of Sarajevo Mayor Ivo Komsic and Italian Ambassador Ruggero Corrias.
The deal, which was strongly promoted by the Italian embassy, is the first time Ars Aevi enters into partnership with a private company.
The Ars Aevi collection was started in the first year of the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War (1992-1995).
The idea behind it was to express cultural resistance against the horrors of war, and it grew year after year through a series of exhibitions and donations in Italy and other European countries. Today it numbers 150 works of art.
For illy, the new agreement is of a piece with its 20 years of support for literature and the arts, sponsoring international contemporary art exhibitions and nurturing collaborations with a long list of world-renowned artists, many of whom have gifted their work to Ars Aevi.
Among these are the likes of Marina Abramovic, Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Braco Dimitrijevic, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, and Michelangelo Pistoletto.
”Illycaffe’s decision to become Ars Aevi’s first private partner is good news for Sarajevo”, Corrias said. ”Our artistic project is a beautiful one for the city of Sarajevo and all it has created over the past two decades: culture as an element of social cohesion, a meeting of cultures”, said Bach, announcing a new illy Collection project.
”A cup made by a Bosnian artist linked to Ars Aevi, that can be sold in the museum store and also used to promote the project”. ”During the drama of war and siege, the project bore witness to how culture and art can be a bridge between Sarajevo and the rest of Europe”, said Cosolini, adding that cooperation between Trieste and the Bosnian capital serves both cities well.
”It would be good for our collaboration, which is already very intense on the economic front, to also have a strong focus in the fields of art and culture”, the Trieste mayor said. To this end, ”we have an initial agreement with Mayor Komsic to bring our Lyric Theater to Sarajevo in the second half of 2014”, Cosolini said. ”We will give this city a musical tribute”.
The Ars Aevi collection is temporarily housed in a warehouse, known as the Art Depot, that was renovated in 2007 thanks to Italian aid.
It awaits construction of an actual contemporary art museum, which has been designed pro bono by Italian architect Renzo Piano.
Source: [via]
