Istituto Svizzero is pleased to take part to Expodemic, a group exhibition at Palazzo delle Esposizioni that recounts the city’s international vocation through its connection with foreign Academies and Cultural Institutes throughout history and in the present day.
More information and tickets here.

Expodemic is the second edition of the Festival of Foreign Academies and Cultural Institutes in Rome designed to spread out from the Palazzo Esposizioni Roma into the fabric of the city.

The exhibition recounts the close bond between the founding and development of exhibitions and the history of the academies, both through the involvement of foreign artists currently resident in the city and through historical documents.

Rome not only hosts the largest number of international cultural centres whose intertwined stories date back to 1666 with the founding of the Académie de France, it is also the city in which the modern concept of the exhibition was first developed. For over forty years, from 1680 to 1720, Giuseppe Ghezzi, a painter, the Secretary of the Accademia di San Luca and the regent of the Congregation of the Virtuous at the Pantheon, organised a series of important exhibitions in the monumental complex of San Salvatore in Lauro, showcasing artworks from the collections of Rome’s aristocratic families and thus forging the concept of the modern exhibition. Thanks to his ability to understand his own period in history, Ghezzi made art public through his series of exhibitions, developing a modern and democratic notion of culture and, in effect, playing the role of history’s first modern curator.

Expodemic sets out from the Palazzo Esposizioni exhibition to spread throughout the city with a series of posters specially produced for the occasion and distributed free of charge in its cultural partners’ various venues. The exhibition aims to illustrate the importance of the deep-rooted bond between the Palazzo delle Esposizioni and Rome’s Foreign Academies and Cultural Institutions, highlighting that cultural archipelago’s richness and diversity as well as its ongoing role, so crucial and relevant to our own time.

The exhibition also includes a public programme of encounters, performances and screenings hosted at Palazzo Esposizioni in addition to numerous exhibitions and events organised in the Academies and Cultural Institutes themselves.

With the collaboration of Accademia Belgica, Accademia di Danimarca, Accademia di Francia a Roma – Villa Medici, Accademia Tedesca Roma Villa Massimo, Accademia di Romania in Roma, Accademia d’Ungheria in Roma, American Academy in Rome, British School at Rome, Centro Ceco di Roma, Circolo Scandinavo, Forum Austiaco di Cultura, Instituto Cervantes di Roma, Istituto Polacco di Roma, Istituto Romanum Finlandiae, Istituto Svizzero, Reale Accademia di Spagna a Roma.