The Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'Arte
The Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'Arte was founded in Banna, near Turin, in 2004.
The goal of the Foundation is the promotion of contemporary art through a program of workshops, discussions and seminars whose aim is to both deepen the theoretical under-pinnings of current artistic practice and to introduce those same philosophical theories to young contemprary artists.
More specifically, the Foundation’s primary activity is to offer a uniquely innovative program of post-graduate education based on a series of workshops with full-residency for Italian artists under the age of 35 and with an accompanying interest in supporting artists from the Piemont region.. The foundation hosts two or more workshops per year, they run from spring to late autumn, and a series of meetings or conferences on issues particularly relevant to contemporary art. The workshops are characterized by intensive study, developed through discussion, analysis and design sessions, and are lead by practicing artists of international profile, who can define, with absolute freedom, the topic and methods of the each workshop.
At the guest artist's discretion, in addition, there may be outside activities introduced, such as roundtables with experts in the field or the preparation of a published document with the goal of developing a more thorough theoretical articulation of the themes for that workshop.
The workshops, furthermore, benefit from the physical structure of the the Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'Arte. Designed around communal working and recreation spaces, it encourages close interaction between the participants, while also offering the necessary possibility of privacy, so important for study and reflection.
Eight young artists are able to particpate in each workshop. They are selected by the foundation based on their curriculum and on the appropriateness of their work to the theme of that workshop and the program decided on by the guest artist. The artists are required to reside for the entire length of the workshop at the foundation and, hence, in closest contact with the guest artist.
The foundation is able to offer an invitation to one disabled artist for each workshop. For that artist the Foundation has dedicated spaces and special ammenities.
At the conclusion of each workshop the Spinola Banna Foundation hosts an exhibition of the work accomplished by the students and publishes documentation of that work and of the workshops’ themes and events
Furthermore and in adddition to the workshops, the Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'Arte, together with public and private institutions, and with the Academies of Fine Arts, organizes an ongoing series of encounters, debates and seminars on contemporary art,
All of the Spinola Banna Foundation’s workshops are documented and recorded on video. From these dozens of hours of filmed material are drawn the “Quaderni Banna” or Banna Notebooks. The notebooks offer lasting documentation of both the works accomplished during the workshop and of the workshops themselves, including recordings of group critiques and guest presentations. In addition, the notebooks also document the seminars and conferences organized between one intensive workshop and another.
These notebooks, published in a boxed set at the conclusion of each calendar year form hypertext in which can be found the highlights of the discussions and debates that occurred in the workshops and detailed documentation of the work of individual teachers and course participants.
In 2008, the Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'Arte signed an agreement with the clasAV master of science in design and production of visual arts of the University of Venice IUAV.
In addition to its now established and well-received program for the visual arts, the Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'Arte has decided to initiate a program for contemporary music. In line with its goals for the promotion of contemporary art and after a careful analysis of the field of music education in Italy and in Piemont - rich in instrumental master classes, seminars and courses to perfect technique-, the Foundation has decided to concentrate on musical composition, and therefore has begun a program to sponsor the creation and execution of new musical works. This new program offers the Foundation the possibility to encourage and challenge a group of young promising composers and musicians in need of support
