The exhibition L’Arma per l’Arte e la Legalità at Palazzo Barberini was born from the collaboration between the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism – Directorate General of Museums and Galleria Nazionale di Arte antica, the Carabinieri Corps and the Roma Tre University.
The exhibition, open until the 30th of October, with free admission, is intended to convey the essential role of the Carabinieri Corps in the protection of cultural heritage.
Language goes through two levels: the visual and emotional and the rational informative level. The path guides the visitor to discover the historical, artistic and archaeological value of more than one hundred works on display, for a period of more than three thousand years: from nuragic bronze up to a Modigliani drawing. At the same time, the exhibition offers the opportunity to know the story of the recovery of cultural heritage, which is often fascinating and gripping, and to understand the damage caused by illicit trafficking and the importance of the action of protection.
The exhibition, curated by the Directorate General of Museums, alternates suggestions and provocations. It combines the illicit weapons (metal detector, box cutters, crowbars and other tools of “art predators”) to the recovered works, evokes the deposit of art traffickers or simply plays on a visual level with the darkness and the light, in order to show the transition from chaos to the restoration of order, legality and context.
A return to the light that is the purpose and the moral of the daily protection action carried out by the Carabinieri Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, of which this exhibition offers the broadest and most complete example ever set.
Among the important works on display: archaeological finds, Roman sculptures, the famous printed letter by Christopher Columbus (1493), paintings from various periods (pre-Roman, Pompeian and Medieval) and authors like Reni, Ligabue, Guercino and Van Gogh.
L’Arma per l’Arte e la Legalità
Galleria nazionale di Arte antica – Palazzo Barberini, Roma
From 14th July to 30th October, h 10 am – 18 pm
Free admission
galleriabarberini.beniculturali.it