June 5, 2026, 6:30 pm, Associazione Archivio Enrico Crispolti Arte Contemporanea APS, via Livenza 2, Rome
The Enrico Crispolti Archive was established in Rome in the first half of the 1950s and today represents one of the largest and richest private collections documenting 20th- and 21st-century art in Italy. On the occasion of the Night of the Archives, as part of Archivissima, the institution opens its spaces to the public with the exhibition “From Participation to the Environment as Social Through the Documents of the Enrico Crispolti Archive”, curated by Anna Mazzanti.
The exhibition highlights two ways of creating art within urban space, both identified by Crispolti as early as the first half of the 1970s. The first concerns the strategic relevance of participatory and community-based artistic interventions within a territory; the second focuses on methods for effectively enhancing the urban environment through the presence of permanent artworks, shared with citizens and therefore protected and valued by the community itself.
Through the examination and selection of archival sources – many of them previously unpublished – the exhibition reconstructs for the first time, with historical and philological accuracy, the phases, processes and experiments that, from the 1970s to the 2000s, marked the main theoretical milestones of Crispolti’s critical reflection on art in urban space.
Admission by reservation only, with 30 minute time slots and groups of up to 10 people, via Eventbrite.
As part of Archivissima and the Night of the Archives, the following event will also take place:
What’s in my attrezzeria
June 5, 6:30 pm, Archivio Negroni, Via Filippo Tajani 3, Milan
“What’s in my attrezzeria” is a short video, created by students from the Contemporary Art and Spaces course, Master’s Degree Programme at the School of Design, Politecnico di Milano, exploring the archive as a living space made not only of objects, but also of traces, details and unexpected memories. Inspired by the contemporary “What’s in my bag” format, the project overturns its logic: instead of personal everyday objects, tools, moulds, medals and fragments from the historic workshop collection of the Negroni Archive emerge.
The video will be available from June 5.
Archivio Attrezzeria Negroni, Politecnico di Milano – School of Design
Contemporary Art and Spaces Course – Academic Year 2025/2026
Faculty: Anna Mazzanti, Matilde Marzotto Caotorta
Video created by: Cristina Ferrara, Davide Grande, Shengyi Wang