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American director Barbara Kopple will be a special guest at the 67th Festival dei Popoli. Fifty years since her 1976 Oscar-winning film Harlan County, U.S.A., the filmmaker will be in Florence to present her landmark debut film on 3 November. On this occasion, she will be presented with the “Women Trailblazers in Documentary Cinema” award, in collaboration with Calliope Arts Foundation. The tribute will take place during the international documentary film festival, from 31 Oc

Inside the mind of Leonora Carrington By Margie MacKinnon Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine SPRING/SUMMER, Issue 9 Courtesy of the Freud Museum London. Artworks © 2026 Estate of Leonora Carrington / ARS, NY and DACS, London. Ph. © Lewis Ronald In 1938, the English author and artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) was living an idyllic life with her lover, the Surrealist painter Max Ernst (1891–1976) in Saint-Martin d’Ardèche in the south of France. Leo

Photographers Viola Parrietti and Marco Berni immortalise the 'Alii Horti' outdoor dance events at Villa La Pietra and Villa La Quiete in Florence on June 29 and July 2 2026. Enjoy highlights from this all-female, student-led performance conceived by Il Palmerino Cultural Association through a grant from the Calliope Arts Foundation, in collaboration with the University of Florence's museum circuit (SMA) and NYU's Villa La Pietra as part of the Estate Fiorentina 2026 programm

In the article 'Sweet dreams and tragic heroines' Federica Parretti explores World Fair sweetheart, Juana Romani, portraitist and model. Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine SPRING/SUMMER, Issue 9 By Federica Parretti Juana Romani, La fille de Théodora, 1892–1893. Private collection. Source: Wikipedia My partner Stefano and I happened upon painter Juana Romani unexpectedly. We were traveling from Paris to the Normandy coast, after Covid-related travel r

Alii Horti I, dance performance grant at Villa La Pietra, ph. Viola Parretti Join Calliope Arts and Associazione Culturale Il Palmerino for the performance 'Alii Horti II' at 5.45pm on July 2, at Villa La Quiete (Via di Boldrone 2), Florence. 'Alii Horti II: From Archive to Garden' is an all-female, student-led dance performance conceived by Associazione Il Palmerino through a grant from the Calliope Arts Foundation. Choreographed by Sophie Robinson (University of Toronto), i

"As a skilled botanical illustrator, Anna was part of a largely invisible community of women whose significant contributions to scientific advancement have gone mostly unnoticed." By Margie MacKinnon Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine SPRING/SUMMER, Issue 9 Anna Atkins, Carix (America), c. 1848-1853, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, New York In 1842, scientist John Herschel coined the term ‘cyanotype’ to d

Until July 2026, the retrospective exhibition Ruth Orkin: The Illusion of Time is on show in Bologna’s Palazzo Pallavicini, following major European exhibitions over the last five years, in France, Spain, Portugal, Hungary and several other stops in Italy. By Linda Falcone Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine ISSUE 9 SPRING/ SUMMER 2026 Ruth Orkin, Jinx and Justin in MG, Florence, Italy, 1951, courtesy of © Ruth Orkin Photo Archive This interview begins

Relative Ties, the current exhibition at the Women’s Art Collection (WAC) at Murray Edwards College in Cambridge, explores the work of four women of the Nicholson family. By Margie MacKinnon Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine SPRING/SUMMER, Issue 9 EQ Nicholson, Runner Bean, c. 1950, wallpaper, © Estate of EQ Nicholson, private collection Relative Ties, the current exhibition at the Women’s Art Collection (WAC) at Murray Edwards College in Cambridge, e

Infranco and Gulacsy see art as a quest By Linda Falcone Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine Spring/Summer 2026 - Issue 9 On mornings at Il Palmerino, as soon as the weather improves, many a landscape artist from various corners of the globe, come to capture its gardens, immortalised on page by author Vernon Lee, and on canvas by painter Lola Costa, successive owners of the Tuscan estate, over the course of 115 years between them. In Autumn, still-lif

Renaissance Women: From d’Este to Dunant By Eleanor Walker Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine Spring/Summer 2026 - Issue 9 Renowned British author Sarah Dunant is known for her writing featuring strong, independent women in important Renaissance centres. Rubens (after Titian), Isabella in Red, c. 1605, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna. Source: Wikipedia From In the Company of the Courtesan, and Sacred Hearts, to In the Name of the Family and The Birth o

Photo Gallery for the Exhibition at Cultural Association Il Palmerino THIS PHOTO GALLERY IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

The catalogue 'Relative Ties', an exploration of the Nicholson women’s artistic legacy across three generations, highlighting matrilineal influence, creative collaborations, textiles, and painting. Relative Ties highlights the work of three generations of women artists from the illustrious Nicholson family—Mabel Nicholson, Nancy Nicholson, EQ Nicholson, and Louisa Creed—and explores what women inherit from their mothers, what can be passed down matrilineal lines, and the impo

This catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition Ketty La Rocca, held at the Estorick Collection in 2025. Born in La Spezia, La Rocca moved to Florence in 1956 where she began working with the avant-garde collective Gruppo 70. Her initial experiments included works of visual poetry and collages that explored the pervasive influence of the mass media on daily life, with a particular focus on gender issues and socio-political themes. During the early 1970s, she turned t

This publication, together with the exhibition it accompanies, presents the largest ever survey of work by Vanessa Bell (1879–1961). Described in 1923 as ‘the most important woman painter in Europe’, Bell was a pioneering modernist and founding member of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of influential English artists, writers and intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century. The book traces Bell’s explorations into the Italian Renaissance, her encounters with the Eu

By Linda Falcone Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine ISSUE 9 SPRING/ SUMMER 2026 Elena Salvini Pierallini, From the ‘Murabile’ wall series, Still Life with Onions and Bananas, detail, 1995, ph. ESP From ‘upright’ artbooks to time-lapse photographic series and larger installations, Florentine artist and photographer Elena Salvini Pierallini – known as ESP – produced a multi-faceted oeuvre, that was more than fifty years in the making. From June 15 to Sep

Isabella D’Este, Nicole Farhi, Sepideh Farsi, Sarah Dunant, Juana Romani, Leonora Carrington, Anna Atkins, Cyrielle Gulacsy, Nancy Nicholson, Louisa Creed, Silvia Infranco and more…. Press the image to flip through Spring/ Summer 2026 Restoration Conversations is a digital magazine, produced by Calliope Arts, spotlighting the achievements of women in history and today. It has two issues a year Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter. Issue 9 of Restoration Conversations homes in on t

The restoration of Artemisia’s Hercules and Omphale, the dramatic backstory By Margie MacKinnon Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine Autumn/Winter 2025 - Issue 8 Getty’s senior conservator of paintings Ulrich Birkmaier cleans the surface of Hercules and Omphale , from Sursock Palace Collections © 2022 J. Paul Getty Trust Artemisia Gentileschi’s Hercules and Omphale , the star of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles’s exhibition, Artemisia’s Strong Women: R

Violante Siriès’ success in a changing art market An interview with Giulia Coco by Linda Falcone Originally published in Restoration Conversations Issue 8 Autumn/Winter 2025 Maria Theresa of Austria’s husband Francis Stephan decided to stay in Vienna with his wife in 1737, despite being proclaimed head of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Europe’s more powerful states had refused to recognise Anna Maria Luisa, the last of the Medici line, as the territory’s legitimate ruler, bec

Personal Reflections on Sarah Cecilia Harrison By Anne Chisholm In the tall house in Hampstead where I grew up hung a number of large, dark portraits in gold frames. The only one that caught my eye was that of a beautiful dark-haired woman, her lips parted, wearing a slightly decollete black dress. My mother told me that it was a portrait of my Irish grandmother, Eliza Beatrice Harrison, painted for her engagement to my English grandfather, Hugh Chisholm, by her younger sis

German botanical artist Marieluise Bantel comes to Il Palmerino with a new exhibition that celebrates the many phases of flowers