Cathy's Art Diary

Delightful exhibition at Museo di Capodimonte of works by Paolo La Motta in response to the museum’s collection. “Sensitive Encounters” seems to be a series of shows inviting contemporary artists to respond to the works in the museum. In this show works from the collection next to the works by the artist which they inspired. One painting Bambina, was like a modern Veronica picture with the figure holding a blank piece of material. I loved a series of exquisite portraits of a boy alongside a sculpted head. It turned out the boy was called Genny who was sadly he was killed in a gang fight five years later which added an extra layer of poignancy to this lovely work. Closes on 30 October 2018

Interesting exhibition at the Museo di Capodimonte which invited ten ‘ideal visitors’, intellectuals, artists, collectors and entrepreneurs to curate a room each at the museum using items from the collection. In essence it was a way of showing this fabulous collection in a different formation to make people think again about the works. Each of the curators had carte blanche to choose 1 -10 works. I’d love to have known the order in which they chose their work and whether there were any arguments! The rooms which stood out were the architect Paolo Pejrone’s room of landscapes which included a gold frame around the window with its view over Naples, the neurologist Laura Bossi Regner’s room of pictures which included monkey’s as we share 93% of our DNA with monkeys and contemporary artist Franceso Vezzilo’s room of sculpture busts shown in pairs settling up a dialogue between them. Closes on 9 December 2018