Uffizi Gallery exhibits long-term plans

The highly anticipated exhibition "Botticelli and the Renaissance," on loan from the Uffizi Gallery, one of the most-visited museums in the world, will be unveiled in April at Shanghai Bund One Art Museum.

The exhibition is one of 10 from the Uffizi's collection that will be shown in Shanghai over the next five years, thanks to a collaboration between the Uffizi Gallery and Shanghai Tix Media.

A total of 50 artworks will be on display to showcase the beauty of Sandro Botticelli's (1445-1510) and his contemporaries' work.

"This is the first and main presence of the Uffizi Gallery in Shanghai and China," said Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.

Schmidt, who has been director of the Uffizi since 2015, formerly served as director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art's Department of Sculpture, Decorative Arts, and Textiles from 2009 to 2015, when he developed a sub-department of Jewish Art. He also worked as a curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (2006–2008) and organized Diafane Passioni on Baroque sculpture at Florence's Palazzo Pitti in 2013.

Ti Gong

What is the biggest challenge of bringing 10 exhibitions from the Uffizi Gallery to Shanghai?

The Uffizi's continued presence in Shanghai for the next five years is strategic for the direct knowledge of our collections – rich, different and unique – as well as of Italy itself in China. The challenge will be to explore, and to present to the Chinese public the vastness of the Uffizi Galleries collections. Ours is a collection like no other in the world, formed over almost half a millennium, but it also is a living entity, as each year the museum adds works to its holdings.

Why was Botticelli chosen for the inaugural exhibition?

Botticelli is one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance, an integral part of Florentine history, a reference artist of the Medici family and heart of the collections of our museum. It seemed appropriate to start our major exhibitions in Shanghai with this truly iconic artist.

Have the themes and contents of the following exhibitions been confirmed?

We have already established the first three exhibitions and will be working with our partners for the other seven.

As we begin with Botticelli, the second exhibition planned between September 2022 and January 2023 will feature a selection from our collection of self-portraits, and certainly the largest, built constantly over 350 years.

From March to July 2023, Shanghai will see the "18th-century masterpieces from the Uffizi," classic works and expressions of the variety of 18th-century schools, from Goya to Canaletto, a century in which Florence and Tuscany particularly flourished.

Why did Uffizi choose Shanghai Tix Media as its partner?

Shanghai Tix Media was a good match for the Uffizi Gallery as it has a tremendous track record of working with international museums with very good reputations. What made the difference in this instance was the idea of a continuous presence in China, which is a strategic objective of the Uffizi Gallery.

In your view, what is the future of some of the world's top museums?

We do welcome long-term partnerships, which enable the galleries to properly plan, curate and execute exhibitions from our collections and show the enormous variety of these collections, rather than individual projects.

Pure digital will probably not be the future for museums, but it will certainly be a useful educational and communication tool, providing a different type of experience. Most people will still want to see the real works, rather than simple projections or travels to the metaverse.

A number of museums are facing financial problems because of the pandemic. What about the Uffizi Gallery?

The Uffizi was impacted like any other museum by the pandemic, as we faced closures and the stasis of international tourism, which greatly reduced visitor numbers. We received some support from the Italian government, and we were able to use the funds we had generated in previous years, which enabled us to continue working in a normal way. We also saw the overall visitor numbers growing from last summer on, with lots of European visitors, which in a way have replaced those from other continents, who weren't able to travel to Italy during this time.

Please use three adjectives in describing the Uffizi exhibition coming to Shanghai!

Stunning, like the masterpieces we are bringing; compelling, for the amazing story behind each masterpiece; and beautiful, because that is what art is.

Ti Gong