GRANT: Resident Artists for Museo Sant'Orsola 2026-27

Museo Sant’Orsola, the Calliope Arts Foundation and the Levett Collection / FAMM are promoting two artist residencies and production grants at the Florence Museum.

The grants aim is to spotlight and support women’s contributions to contemporary artistic practices. This residency is conceived as a period devoted to research and artistic experimentation, offering the selected artists the opportunity to develop a specific project that could then be produced and presented to the public at Museo Sant’Orsola in Spring 2027. During this residency, the artists will receive a grant supporting their research period, including accommodations and a workspace, in addition to receiving curatorial and technical support.

We are delighted to announce the artists selected for the residency grants for 2026-27 are Japanese artist Chiaki Shimizu (@chiki_chiaki) and Italian sculptor Camilla Alberti (@camilla__alberti). Selected from a pool of 985 applications, Shimizu and Alberti will begin their residencies in October, developing new research projects in dialogue with the history of the former convent of Sant’Orsola. Chiaki Shimizu will draw on her practice of camouflage, garment-making and photography, turning them into a poetic and critical tool to question women’s invisibility and identity across past and present. Camilla Alberti will bring to the complex her research practice focused on matter, processes of transformation, and forms of knowledge historically connected to the feminine, incorporating materials and traces from Sant’Orsola’s current construction site.

Post-Residency

An additional budget will be dedicated to the production of a specific project. The new work(s) will be presented to the public as part of a high-profile art event scheduled at Museo Sant’Orsola between March and June 2027. The presentation will be accompanied by a media campaign and communication activities, as well as editorial materials, designed to contribute to the promotion of the artist’s work and its recognition at both national and international levels.

Museo Sant’Orsola

Museo Sant’Orsola is located in the historic district of San Lorenzo in Florence, within a section of the former convent of Sant’Orsola currently undergoing redevelopment. While awaiting the official opening of the entire renovated complex, the museum is already active in enhancing the history and the tangible and intangible heritage of the site, as well as in supporting artistic research and contemporary craftsmanship. The former convent of Sant’Orsola is a monument that has lived many lives. Repeatedly transformed and altered over time, the buildings still preserve visible traces of their different phases of occupation, although the site’s history remains partly fragmented. Since 2022, artists have been invited to conceive and produce site-specific works in direct dialogue with the architecture and the history of the former convent of Sant’Orsola.

The history of the former convent of Sant’Orsola is intrinsically linked to that of thousands of women who have lived and/or worked within its walls through the centuries. Women’s artistic practices are also deeply rooted in the identity of the place. Founded in the fourteenth century as a Benedictine convent for women, the complex later became part of the Manifattura Tabacchi system, where the workforce was composed predominantly of women, the sigaraie (female cigar makers). In the post-war period, it served as a refugee center for displaced families. One of the missions of Museo Sant’Orsola is to be a center for the artistic expression of today’s women artists.

Grant Sponsors

Calliope Arts Foundation and the Levett Collection / FAMM

Founded in 2021 by Margie MacKinnon and Wayne McArdle, the Calliope Arts Foundation operates internationally to promote the contributions of women in the visual arts, literature, science, and social history through exhibitions, restoration projects, educational programmes and publications like Restoration Conversations magazine and The Curators’ Quaderno series, with a special focus on Florence and London. This commitment is part of a shared dialogue with collector and art patron Christian Levett, founder of FAMM in Mougins, a private museum based in the South of France which hosts Europe’s most comprehensive collection of art by women from the Impressionists to today. The Levett Collection in Florence hosts the largest collection of Women Abstractionists in the world.