Italy – Melisse Laing

Verona, Italy, has been added to the exhibition schedule for Color Improvisations. My two quilts created for the show, “Seeing the Light” and “Out on a Limb,” will be among those at the Museum of Fine Art in Verona’s Palazzo Forti, 3/8-13/11.

Not only is this a huge opportunity for the exhibition, adding yet another country to the show’s tour, but it’s an amazing location to show contemporary art quilts. Palazzo Forti is Verona’s modern art gallery, but the building itself is anything but modern. Constructed in the 13^th century on what was a Roman site, the first attempt to convert it to a museum was thwarted by the Austrian occupation. After the war, the building spent a few months as a museum, only to be closed again until the 1980s. It finally found its place in the art world in 1982. Since then, it has held exhibitions dedicated to Italian artists, the Impressionists and the Expressionists and has built a permanent collection that includes the works of Italian notables such as Fattori, Guidi and Dall’Oca Bianca.

You can read more about the history of this building by following the link on the Color Improvisations website. And you can read more about – and see more photos of – the show on the Color Improvisations page on my blog.