The Advancing Women Artists Foundation (AWA), a non-profit association founded by the American philanthropist and author Jane Fortune, which has the mission of identifying, restoring and exhibiting works of art created by female artists in Florentine museums. Operating in Florence since 2006 and supporter of various restorations, the Foundation is recognized worldwide for the book by its founder, Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence, history of the safeguarding of female works belonging to the State Museums of Florence, which has become a documentary winner of the prestigious Emmy Award in 2013, the television equivalent of the film Oscar.
Now it is the turn of the Municipality of Florence to be the beneficiary of a large conservation project of great importance, sponsored by the AWA Foundation, which this time lends itself to protecting and promoting paintings and sculptures donated to the City of Florence as a sign of solidarity after the flood of the 1966 and which now find their place in the new Museo Novecento. The project involved 35 works of art, the majority collected during the historical initiative ‘Artists for Florence’ promoted by the art historian Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, of which five will soon be exhibited in the permanent collection of the new museum.
After almost 50 years in storage, a painting by Carla Accardi, a famous exponent of abstract art in Italy, and three works by the initiator of the Roman School, the Lithuanian artist Antonietta Raphael Mafai will be exhibited together with the huge triptych Camion by Pop Titina Maselli, who together with Accardi is considered one of the most important painters of the second half of the twentieth century.
Made in collaboration with the Musei Civici Fiorentini, this Advancing Women Artists Foundation (AWA) project entitled ‘Le Donne dell’Alluvione’ will become a documentary produced by PBS (American public television), based on the new Fortune book to be released in Italy on next fall. The documentary will follow the foundation in the main steps of the recovery and rediscovery of the works of art collected by Ragghianti and the inauguration of the museum that was part of her dream, where these works, in storage for too many years, will finally find ‘home’.