11.04.2020

Tips & trends

A guide to online cultural resources

Day after day hundreds of cultural initiatives are launched on the web to replace exhibitions, conferences and trade shows suppressed or postponed to avoid the spread of Covid-19. From activities for children to performing arts events and interviews with artists, designers and curators, let's discover together the best of the online cultural offer.

Cultural events are blooming online like spring flowers and are among the positive notes of these long weeks spent in isolation. We could even claim that they are a cure against social distancing. For sure the creative response to the global emergency caused by Covid-19 makes us travel - not only with our minds - with its offer of close encounters with subjects and people usually hard to reach.

Directly from our computers at home, and possibly seated on our dear sofa or on our favorite vintage chair, we can now travel around the world visiting museums and exhibitions, exploring forgotten archives and watching unprecedented performances. The offer is endless and, in order to fully enjoy this unique opportunity it is worth setting a calendar or planning a personalized itinerary in accordance with our spare time. 

We get events such as the Social Distancing Festival, an online platform created to collect all the creative programming online, or free online lessons and master, and lots of apps promoted by national cultural heritage institutes, theatres and museums. But, to put your "online life" to the test, we would like to offer you our personal guide to online cultural resources.

Monday: a Live Talk between Vitra Museum director Mateo Kries and Paola Antonelli, senior curator for Architecture and Design at MoMA on the implications for cultural institutions and designers in the US and Europe in light of the current crisis. 

Tuesday: give a try to the Getty Museum challenge, as well as the one launched by many other museum around the globe, to become a living masterpiece. Imitate your favorite work of art with what you have at home. To celbrate the 500 year from Raffaello Sanzio's death we picked the so called Chair Madonna at Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

Wednesday: explore the works created in March at Triennale Milano by artists, designers, architects, intellectuals, musicians, singers, writers, directors and journalists for Decameron: storie in streaming. All workes drew inspiration from Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, about a group of young people who stayed outside Florence for ten days to escape the Black Plague in 1348 and took turns in telling stories to pass the time.

Thursday: visit BIAF 2019, Binennale dell’Antiquariarto Firenze, one of the most eclusive international events dedicated to the Fine Arts. Visit the Associazione Antiquari d’Italia website to get a flashback on the world's best window on the art market of arts and antiquities.

Friday: to end your working week get a cocktail with a curator at The Frick Collection, New York. A happy hour where you can enjoy a live stremed curator's talk on one of the museum's masterpiece paired with a special drink recipe. 

Saturday: the weekend starts with a couple of online exhibition selected by intOndo from the many available online: Louise Bourgeois drawings 1947-2007, a selection of drawings by celebrated French-American artist Louise Bourgeois cureted by Hausen & Wirth gallery. And then go back in time at São Paulo Museum of Art which is recreating a exhibition design by Brazilian Modernist Lina Bo Bardi, with updated versions of her glass and concrete easels of 1968. You can enjoy 117 artworks from 400 BC to the 2000s on Bo Bardi iconic display. 

Sunday: listen and listen again to the music of Boléro by French composer Maurice Ravel, performed remotely by the New York Philarmonic to thank and support all the people that are daily facing the Covid-19 emergency.