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Vanessa Nicolson, Carla Danella, Anne Chisholm, Sarah Cecilia Harrison, Suzanne Valadon and more... Press the image to flip through Autumn Winter 2025/6 This issue of Restoration Conversations  explores modern and contemporary art and film from women’s perspectives, with several thought-provoking shows, like ‘MARY MARY’ (quite contrary) at The Artist’s Garden and ‘Ketty La Rocca: you you’, the Estorick Collection’s retrospective on the Italian conceptual artist. In Florence,

Shubha Taparia and Cécile Davidovici at Museo Sant'Orsola, 'Beyond Bloomsbury, with Carrington and more... Press the image to flip through Spring 2025 A celebration of restoration and art production, our Spring 2025 issue delves into the Innocenti Hospital’s historic archives, in search of stories and ‘tokens’ belonging to its girl foundlings; then, we revel in the before-and-after glory of eighteenth-century painter Violante Siriès Cerroti’s newly restored Reading Madonna –

Lola Costa, Vernon Lee, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf... 'a garden of one's own' at Il Palmerino Cultural Association in Florence

Conservator Eugenia Di Rocco, Lavinia Fontana, Maria Luisa Raggi, Ethyl Smyth and more... Press the image to flip through Winter 2024 Today’s women, featured in the Winter 2024 issue of Restoration Conversations, have done their share of searching, and that may well be the reason they find themselves pictured between these pages. Violinist Ruth Palmer and scholar Claudia Tobin seek – through their research and performance – to bring female composers and poetic-minded ‘freedom

Alice Neel, Joan Mitchell, Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, Lee Miller and more... Press the image to flip through Spring 2023 'Friends and Strangers’, the title of Margie MacKinnon’s article on the London-based exhibitions of painters Alice Neel and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, could be used to describe the whole of  Restoration Conversations . Indeed, Issue 3, Spring 2023 comprises a series of ‘meetings’ with modern-day and historic women – both familiar and largely unknown. Many of

Artemisia Gentileschi is at Michelangelo's house and under restoration, female pioneers of Abstractionism and more... Press image to flip through Autumn/ Winter 2022 Michelangelo’s home is Artemisia’s Abode. This issue focuses on Florence’s Casa Buonarroti – the home of Michelangelo, who Artemisia Gentileschi honoured with her Allegory of Inclination , the painting now being restored, under the public’s watchful eyes. The project ‘Artemisia UpClose’ reveals how the painter or

Restoring the identity tokens of female foundling children at the Innocenti Institute whose historic archive is in Florence. PRESS ON THE IMAGE TO FLIP THROUGH The Innocenti Hospital’s historical archive in Florence comprises more than 13,000 documents and objects from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, including ‘tokens’ that parents left with their foundling children, as proof of identity. Located in the ancient refectory, the archive hosts one of the world’s most u

Vivian Maier, Laura Knight, Iris Origo, Sofia Uslenghi, Wanda and Marion Wulz and more... Press the image to flip through Spring/Summer 2022 Contemporary Italian women photographers meet their historic counterparts at Florence’s Forte Belvedere and Villa Bardini Museum, during Fotografe! Women Photographers: Alinari Archives and Contemporary Perspectives , an exhibition showcasing one of the world’s most important photographic archives. This issue features interviews with eme

Becoming Suzanne Valadon By Margie MacKinnon Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine Autumn/Winter 2025 - Issue 8 Suzanne Valadon, 1923, The Violin Case, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Source: Wikipedia Suzanne Valadon’s life reads like a paperback novel, with a plot that takes the heroine from obscurity to notoriety and, belatedly, much deserved acclaim. Its setting is Montmartre, the bohemian centre of turn-of-the-century Paris, and the cast of

Carla Danella in conversation with author Vanessa Nicolson By Linda Falcone Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine Autumn/Winter 2025 - Issue 8 Art historian and author Vanessa Nicolson, ph. courtesy of the author Freelance writer and curator Carla Danella speaks with long-time friend Vanessa Nicolson, an art historian and author of the memoirs Have you Been Good?  and The Truth Game . More recently, Nicolson published Angels of Mud , a novel set against

Exploring Pasquarosa’s home and history By Federica Parretti Originally published in RESTORATION CONVERSATIONS magazine Autumn/Winter 2025 - Issue 8 Pasquarosa, 1913, Still life with flowers and a fan , Civico Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea We passed Tivoli, with its lovely view of the whole plain from the Aniene to the Tiber valleys, dotted with their renowned Roman hills. Then we continued on to Arsoli, amidst nature still groggy from its sleep, which offered unexpect