"Monuments to shameful historical legacies, like Confederate statues in the United States, are often caught between demands for preservation and calls for destruction. In Bolzano, the commission managed to avoid that binary by de-signing a kind of counter-monument."
Harper's Magazine, August 2020, p. 63.
"Früher grüsste der Duce ungestört – doch kürzlich hat Südtirol eine Lösung für den Umgang mit fragwürdigen Denkmälern gefunden.
Nach jahrzehntelangem Streit darüber, ob Denkmäler von Benito Mussolini abgerissen oder stehen gelassen werden sollten, hat man sich in der norditalienischen Grenzregion auf eine Alternative geeinigt, die Vorbild für andere sein könnte."
NZZ, July 15, 2020, p. 5 (Ruth Fulterer)
European Museum of the Year Award 2016
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Winner of the European Museum of the Year Award 2016 announced in San Sebastian, Spai.
The European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA), organised by the European Museum Forum (EMF), was presented at the 2016 Award Ceremony held in San Sebastian, Spain, in collaboration with TOPIC, Tolosa’s International Puppet Centre, on 9 April 2016. This year’s ceremony, held for 39th time, was marked by the centenary of Kenneth Hudson, founder of EMYA and EMF.
The Ceremony was attended by over 200 people from 29 European countries.
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BZ ´18–´45.One Monument, One City, Two Dictatorships: permanent exhibition within the Monument to Victory, Bolzano, Italy has received Special Commendations.
The exhibition reintegrates a controversial monument, which has long served as the focal point of battles over politics, culture, and regional identity. The project is a highly courageous and professional initiative to promote humanism, tolerance and democracy.
A permanent exhibition within the Monument to Victory
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"BZ '18–'45: one monument, one city, two dictatorships", is an exhibition opened to the public in July 2014. It illustrates the history of the Monument to Victory, designed by Marcello Piacentini and erected by the Fascist regime between 1926 and 1928.
The monument reflects and provides a link to local historical events during the twenty years of Fascism and the Nazi occupation, within the context of national and international events in the years between the two World Wars (1918–1945). -
The exhibition also covers the radical urban transformations for the construction of a new “Italian” city of Bolzano, from the end of the 1920s.
Finally, the exhibition confronts the difficult relationship between the different language groups, caused by the overbearing legacy of Fascism, within the evolving social and political framework of the second half of the twentieth century to the present day.
By a joint decision taken by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Affairs and Tourism, the Autonomous Province of Bolzano and Bolzano City Council in 2012, it was decided to open the monument to the public as well as displaying there a permanent exhibition.