About us

WHAT IS CALLOPE ARTS?

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Calliope Arts, is an organisation created in 2021 by Margie MacKinnon and Wayne McArdle to promote and expand public knowledge and appreciation of art, literature and social history from a female perspective, through restorations, exhibitions, education and cultural initiatives. Calliope Arts is based in London and carries out many of its programmes in Florence. Find out more about out current restoration project here.

 

Calliope Arts’ year-one highlights include its role as donor for the all-woman photography exhibition, ‘Fotografe!’ on display at Villa Bardini and Forte del Belvedere, organised by the Alinari Foundation for Photography and CR Firenze, in collaboration with the City of Florence. The show, which ran from June to October 2022, saw the emergence of new archival research on photographers like Wanda and Marion Wulz and Edith Arnaldi. In July 2022, Calliope Arts supported a partnership with the British Institute of Florence, funding the development of a pilot course called ‘100 Years of Women’ spotlighting female protagonists in Florence from the unification of Italy, to the foundations of feminism and the advent of Italy’s partisans. In spring 2022, Calliope Arts was media partner for The Oltrarno Gaze 2022 exhibition and events series, funded by the AWA Legacy Fund and conceived as a dialogue through the centuries between modern-day art and artisanship, and art by historic women, with emphasis on Florence’s Oltrarno district.

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The organisation supports the Restoration Conversations project, led by author and former director of Advancing Women Artists, Linda Falcone, which involves the publication of a magazine and an internationally broadcast cultural programme of the same name. which advocates and documents the ‘restoration’ of women’s creative achievements in all fields, through art conservation, digital programmes and conferences, in partnership with museums, universities, technical schools and other institutions of renown.

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