The afterlives of the modern museum interior. Furniture and art mounting mechanisms in Palazzo Bianco, Genoa (1942–present)

• Applicant: Dr. Flavia Crisciotti
• Subject Area: Art History ; Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 556574723

Palazzo Bianco, an eighteenth-century residence in Genoa, has one particular characteristic that does not readily fit within conventional analyses of architecture: its afterlife in the 1940s is better known among architectural historians than its creation. The partial destruction of the Palazzo during the bombing of November 1942 made possible a drastic renovation and the redisplay of the art collection. By a daring combination of modern fittings and art mounting mechanisms never before attempted in a historical building, the architect Franco Albini (1905–1977) and art historian Caterina Marcenaro (1906–1976) created an interior whose spatial qualities have been the subject of much recent scholarship. (Dal Co 1997, Huber 1997, Piva Prina 1998, Bucci Rossari 2005, Bucci Irace 2006, Mazzi 2006, Jones 2014, Fontanarossa 2015, Mondini Haupt 2015, Falguières 2016, Catalano 2018, Tinè Pinna 2019) Less is known, however, about the involvement of Franco Albini and Caterina Marcenaro in the 1970 renovation that has bestowed the present-day hybridity upon the original, raising questions about authenticity, authorship and reproducibility. Should an interior be considered authentic if it was changed and altered by its own authors? When preserving Palazzo Bianco, what point of its complex lifecycle should be taken into account? My research addresses the singularity of Palazzo Bianco’s historiography, extending in time – toward later decades – our grasp of the 1940s intervention. It reconsiders the building interior not as hermetically sealed within a time capsule of the past, but on its material remains and photographic images. Drawing on extensive archival research and updated historiographical perspectives, this study argues for relocating architectural historiography away from the conventional focus on the “original state” and to rethink architecture’s provenance.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: Italy, Norway
• Hosts: Professorin Kristin B. Aavitsland; Professorin Mari Lending, Ph.D.