Alinari Photography Museum to Open
The Alinari Foundation for Photography will open a new dual-site cultural project, including museum venues, in Florence and in Montecatini, marking a new chapter for one of the world’s most important photography archives.
Under the direction of the president Giorgio van Straten and director Claudia Baroncini, two new locations exhibiting the archive will be built. In Florence, the foundation will take over the former Marescialli School, located in the Santa Maria Complex, to house part of the archive. The 1,800 square meter complex will include a library, rooms for research and consultation, offices, and a bookshop. The architectural project will begin in the next few years and aims for the Alinari Museum to be open to the public by 2028.
The second hub in Montecatini Terme, called the House of Photography, will take over the Centro Excelsior Spa. The building will be equipped with storage facilities, laboratories for restoration and digitalisation and lecture rooms for higher education programmes in conservation and photographic heritage.
In Florence in 1852, brothers Leopoldo, Giuseppe and Romualdo Alinari founded Fratelli Alinari, a photography firm that became a pioneering force in photography, playing a defining role in documenting Italy’s artistic and cultural heritage. Initially, their work focused on documenting important Italian paintings, sculptures, and architecture, before expanding to capture the landscape and towns across Italy. Portraiture was another important part of their practice, including images of people in national dress. By 1860, the brothers had gained official recognition and were commissioned to photograph the Italian royal family. The brothers created catalogues of their photographs, with the first published in 1856, featuring panoramas of Tuscany and its famous monuments in Florence, Siena, Pisa and Arezzo. Their photographs were also shown in exhibitions across Europe, establishing their firm in the world of photography.
In 2020, the Fratelli Alinari archive was purchased by the Region of Tuscany, who established the Alinari Foundation Collection. The foundation is focused on the preservation, description and digitalisation of over 5,000,000 photographs, negatives and artefacts. International collaborations with museums, such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, which display the works, are also organised through the foundation.
These two sites will preserve and revitalise the Alinari archive, honouring Florence’s deep-rooted photographic heritage and its legacy in modernisation. (Aniela Cabut)
