Awards In Italian Culture 2016
American Award to Dr. Davide Gasparotto
Davide Gasparotto is a native of Bassano del Grappa, Italy, who studied the History of Art and Classical Archaeology at the University of Pisa and the Scuola Normale Superiore under the guidance of Paola Barocchi and Salvatore Settis. He was the Director of the Fondazione Piero della Francesca in Sansepolcro from 1996 to 1998. Afterword he spent 12 years as a curator at the National Gallery of Parma and the Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici e Storici di Parma e Piacenza. In this capacity he was responsible for the preservation of the cultural heritage in the province of Piacenza (Il Collegio Alberoni di Piacenza. Guida alle collezioni, 2003; Il tondo di Botticelli a Piacenza. Indagini storiche e tecniche, 2006;) and he collaborated to several major exhibitions organized by the National Gallery of Parma (Parmigianino, 2003; Correggio, 2008). From 2012 to 2014 he was Director of the Galleria Estense in Modena, where he oversaw the complete restoration of the museum and redisplay of the collection after a major earthquake that took place in May 2012. In December 2014 he was appointed as Senior Curator of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. He was also a Francis A. Yates Fellow at the Warburg Institute, London (1999), Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (2007), and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2011-2012). He organized several acclaimed exhibitions such as Bonacolsi l’Antico. Uno scultore nella Mantova di Andrea Mantegna e di Isabella d’Este (Mantova, Palazzo Ducale, 2008, with Filippo Trevisani), Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento (Padova, Palazzo del Monte di Pietà, 2013, with Guido Beltramini and Adolfo Tura), Portable Classic (Venezia, Fondazione Prada, 2015, with Salvatore Settis), and most recently Aldo Manuzio. Il Rinascimento di Venezia (Venezia, Gallerie dell’Accademia, 2016, with Guido Beltramini). Davide Gasparotto’s research interests include painting, sculpture and the decorative arts of the Renaissance, the rediscovery of classical antiquity between the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century, and the history of collecting, particularly in the Italian Renaissance. He has published extensively on Tuscan, Venetian, Emilian and Lombard art from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Recently he was one of the curators of the exhibitions Louis Style. French Frames 1610-1792 (Getty Museum, 2015) and The shimmer of gold: Giovanni di Paolo in Renaissance Siena (Getty Museum, 2016). He is currently working on an exhibition project on Giovanni Bellini and landscape, which will take place at the Getty in the Fall 2017. His first painting acquisition for the Getty Museum was Danaë (about 1621-23) by Orazio Gentileschi.
Italian Award to Dr. Eike Schmidt
Eike Schmidt, forty-eight years old, art historian, German, born in Freiburg. In 2009, he earned his PhD with honors in art history at the Ruprecht-Karls University with a thesis on "The Medici collection of ivory carvings in the 16th and 17th centuries". He has lived and worked in Italy for many years, including in Florence, where from 1994 to 2001 he was a fellow and researcher at the Deutsches Kunsthistorisches Institut. In 1997 he won the “Nicoletta Quinto” prize of the Foundation International Prize Galileo Galilei of Pisa. From 2001 to 2006 he was curator and researcher at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. From 2004 to 2008 he was a member of the research project on "Women at the court of the Medici," Hertzian Library, in Rome. From 2006 to 2008 he was curator in the Department of sculpture and decorative arts in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. From 2008 to 2009 he was Director and Head of the Department of European sculpture and applied art at Sotheby's, London. From 2008 to 2015 he was a member of the Scientific Committee of the magazine "Sculpture Journal", London. From 2009 to 2015 he was curator and head of the Department of sculpture, applied arts and textiles of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. From 2011 to 2015 he was a member of the Scientific Committee of "TEFAF - The European Fine Art Fair", Maastricht, Netherlands. Since November 2015 he has been Director of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Considered an international expert on Florentine art, he has published several monographs and dozens of essays. Seven-time winner, with works of art purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, of the "Acquisitions Museum of the Year" of the magazine "Apollo", London.
Previous FIAC Awards
2015
Mariella Utili
Eric M. Lee
2013
Dr. Colin B. Bailey
Dr. Daniela Porro
2012
Brian J. Ferriso
Antonia Pasqua Recchia
2011
Glenn Lowry
Rossella Vodret
2010
Malcolm Rogers
Roberto Cecchi
2008
Anne Poulet
Nicola Spinosa
2007
Phillip de Montebello
Cristina Acidini