Gibellina is the Italian Capital of Contemporary Art for 2026
First city to bear this title. It was destroyed by the Belice earthquake and in reconstruction transformed into an art workshop
3' min read
3' min read
Gibellina is the 'Italian Capital of Contemporary Art 2026'. It was proclaimed by Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli during a ceremony held today in Rome, in the Ministry's Sala Spadolini. Among those present were the General Director of Contemporary Creativity Angelo Piero Cappello and the President of the Jury Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.
First Italian City Capital of Contemporary Art
It is the first Italian city to boast this title. "The institution of the title 'Italian Capital of Contemporary Art'," emphasises Minister Giuli, "wants to pay a new, rightful tribute to Italian creativity and genius, and is confirmation of the government's active commitment to restoring the awareness of being Italy, its cities, its territories and its inhabitants. "Portami il Futuro' is an ambitious project that develops through initiatives related to contemporary art and creativity, from cultural design to urban regeneration, restoration and, above all, the construction of a vision of the future that takes beauty into account as a shared and regenerating value.
The reasons for the jury's choice
.Here are the motivations for the jury's choice: "The first 'Italian Capital of Contemporary Art' with its candidature offers our country an organic and solid project, delivering to today's Italy an exemplary model of cultural intervention, based on values and actions that recognise art as a social function and culture as a common good. For its planning capacity in reactivating its extraordinary heritage of works, combining in the present memory and future, conservation and valorisation, attention to the local and international ambition; for its capacity to involve the new generations and the entire citizenry, calling upon the broader territory on the basis of a common civic awareness, forging alliances with public and private, national and transnational institutions; for being a pioneer city of what we now call urban regeneration, and for its capacity to be both a city-work and a city to be inhabited: for its project, with which the city will become a great laboratory where the practices and energies of contemporary art will be called upon to share thoughts and solutions on the themes of public space, community, landscape, sustainability and the capacious concept of heritage. For all these reasons outlined above, we believe we can identify the city of Gibellina as 'Italian Capital of Contemporary Art' 2026'.
The old centre destroyed by the 1968 Belice earthquake
.The current settlement was built after the 1968 Belìce earthquake about 11 kilometres from the previous site. The old centre, destroyed by the earthquake, was abandoned and in the 1980s was transformed into the Cretto di Burri, a work of land art by the artist Alberto Burri.
The transformation into a laboratory for urban experimentation
.For the reconstruction of Ghibellina, former mayor Ludovico Corrao called world-famous artists such as Pietro Consagra and Alberto Burri to Gibellina. Burri refused to place one of his works in the new urban context that was being built and created the Cretto di Burri, or Grande Cretto, on the old Gibellina, in memory of the earthquake that destroyed it. Many artists answered the mayor's call, from Mario Schifano to Andrea Cascella, from Arnaldo Pomodoro to Mimmo Paladino, from Franco Angeli to Leonardo Sciascia. The town thus became a laboratory for artistic experimentation and planning, in which artists and valuable works renewed the urban space according to an innovative perspective.
