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Calliope Arts
Documenting women’s stories, today and through the centuries.
A project for the ‘restoration’ of women’s creative achievements,
through research, awareness, conservation and cultural exchange.
Calliope Arts also raises awareness through Restoration Conversations livestream broadcasts and bi-annual magazine.
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About
Find out about our programmes and guiding principles as the Restoration Conversation
project makes a start.
Our magazine
Our WINTER 2026 issue is now 'out' in its digital version.
Press the cover to read the magazine online.
In the Autumn/Winter 2026 issue of Restoration Conversations magazine, former choreographer Federica Parretti shares a personal story of early twentieth-century American dancer Isadora Duncan – a foremother of Modern Dance – who revolutionised audience expectations in Florence and farther afield. After spotlighting the ‘Uffizi underwater’ and Florence in the ‘50s, 60s and 70s, with Foto Locchi at Villa Bardini, Restoration Conversations magazine takes a whirlwind tour through museums and cultural venues in search of art by women.
Restoration Conversations readers will enjoy warm domestic scenes displayed at Mary Cassatt’s Musée d’Orsay retrospective, the portraiture of painter Eva Gonzalès at Le Petit Palais and FAMM, and the light-filled frescos by Phoebe Anna Traquair in her ‘Sistine Chapel of Edinburgh’. Learn how Surrealist designer Elsa Schiaparelli brought cutting-edge artists into the realm of prêt-à-porter and join us for a glimpse of Hortense Acton’s legacy at Villa La Pietra. As The Bayeux Tapestry gathers crowds at The British Museum, author and embroiderer Jan Messent tells a unique story of the women who stitched history into the huge 11th-century tapestry.
Explore untold stories and tales of talent, in history and today.
Restoration Conversations is also the title of our bi-annual magazine. Whet your appetite with events and articles.
What to watch...
Video footage: Giorgio Ventura. Montage: Leonardo Biancanelli
From the secret gardens of the Medici princesses at their retreat in villa La Quiete, to the monumental green of Villa La Pietra, host to Roaring-Twenties plein-air theatre, enjoy this video of the Alii Horti performance, in which five international student dancers re-evoke the life stories of eight historic women who made these villas their home through the centuries, including Alessandra Strozzi, Vittoria della Rovere, Eleonora Ramirez di Montalvo, Maria Maddalena Frescobaldi Capponi and Hortense Mitchell Acton.
This performance and its video were created by Il Palmerino Cultural Association and the Calliope Arts Foundation, in collaboration with the British Institute of Florence, Villa La Quiete (University of Florence, Sistema Museale di Ateneo) and New York University’s Villa La Pietra, as part of ‘The Garden Project’ and l’Estate Fiorentina 2026, with The Florentine as media partner.
Reading up...
The Curators' Quaderno
Women of the Flood - Issue 9
In Florence, when the 1966 flood hit, a number of notable women made significant contributions to the post-flood efforts and their work generated lasting effects. Top professionals from the National Central Library, Museo Galileo and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure share insight on woman chemists, conservators, curators and Mud Angels who shaped art and book conservation and contributed to reconstruction efforts, following the Arno’s flooding.
‘Women of the Flood’ is the topic of the latest edition of The Curator’s Quaderno, a notebook-style publication edited by Linda Falcone, and published by Calliope Arts Foundation, in collaboration with The Florentine.
What is tcq? The Curators’ Quaderno is a collection of notebook-style publications, conceived by the Calliope Arts Foundation and Restoration Conversations, in collaboration with The Florentine Press, to raise awareness of women’s contributions to the fields of art, science and culture.
What's on this autumn...
Wanda Wulz, I + Cat, 1932, gelatin silver print (reprint 1982), Florence, Archivi Alinari-Collezione Zannier
Wanda and Marion Wulz
Avant-Garde Photography in 20th-century Italy at the Estorick
This exhibition, at the Estorick Gallery in London starting September 16, explores the pioneering work of sisters Wanda Wulz (1903–1984) and Marion Wulz (1905–1993), key figures in the development of avant-garde photography in 20th-century Italy. It brings together studio portraits, commercial commissions and avant-garde experiments, revealing the central role the Wulz sisters played in shaping modern photographic culture in Italy, as well as tracing the wider legacy of the Wulz family, whose photographic practice spanned generations.
For more...
Header Photo: © Olga Makarova, all images from the Archivio Studio Wulz are © Archivi Alinari, Firenze
Three main photos (left to right) by: Viola Paretti, CinestudioItaly, Chris Henley