Welcome to Bologna and its ancient Academy
Bologna is a city of art and a capital of culture and, being the location of an important University as well as a prestigious Academy, it is also the meeting place for a multitude of students, many of whom come from different countries.
The Fine Arts Academy of Bologna, above all thanks to the use of Community projects such as Erasmus, Socrates and others, welcomes a growing number of students coming from both European and non-European countries.
Our city's by now proverbial hospitality provided through its institutions, fosters the practice of mutual exchanges of information and experiences amongst young people from different places, representing a vital contribution to cultural enrichment in general and, in particular, artistic enrichment. Indeed, if it is true to say that the richness of art is based upon the variety of ways and styles engendered at the heart of the different cultures which expressed them, then to encourage their meeting and exchange means creating new openings for comparison and harmonious intermingling. The meeting and contrast between different cultures has, for art, always triggered that crucial process generating 'newness'.
Origins, identity and vocations
The Fine Arts Academy of Bologna has ancient origins. As an idea it began towards the end of 16th century as the "Accademia degli Incamminati", founded by Annibale, Agostino, Ludovico Carracci, and continued in the glorious "Accademia Clementina". At the beginning of the 19th century, together with the Milanese Brera academy, the "Accademia Nazionale" and, subsequently, at the days of Guidi and Morandi, it came to be known as the "Accademia dei Maestri". So from its origins up until the present day the Academy can boast four rich centuries of history.
Our syllabus, like that of the other Italian academies, consists of combining, in an close-knit didactic core, both theory and practice, in such a way that the knowledge of art is enriched by a further 'hands-on' test. This is the priceless contribution provided by the Academy to the historical, critical and philological discourse on art, which is otherwise specific to university studies.
Here we study and learn art, teaching us how to practise it through a kind of teaching that makes use of the age-old knowledge derived from tradition and, at the same time, fostering a natural propensity to investigate and discover new languages and novel techniques.
Tradition and innovation have represented, and still do represent, the same sides of a coin spent on the study and the practise of art, on the one hand guaranteeing a complete awareness of our historical memory, while on the other aiding development and opening up experimental fields.
The many vocations with which the Bologna Academy is endowed have come to the forefront in time through the teachings of many great masters, who have always enriched them with new expressive potential, so much so as to guarantee today's student wide scope for research into new techniques as well as into the new expressive languages.
The Bologna Academy is active and productive and, by making good use of the opportunities offered by the city's institutions, such as the Modern Art Gallery and the Ente Fiera, or the numerous city galleries, gives its students several chances to exhibit their works.
With its one hundred and ten lecturers who perform teaching duties covering a range of twenty-six subjects, opens the way to students who enrol by offering them with worthwhile opportunities for the study of art and the learning of this difficult and exclusive trade.
The traditional teaching spaces have been joined by the Fine Arts Halls, which amount to a cognitive, informative and communicative system of art.
Those spaces are managed by the Academy along with the National Art Gallery and comprise: the Museum of the Academy, the place where the works of our artistic and historic Foundation are displayed cyclically; the Clementine Hall, the best specific container for exhibiting drawings; the Lecture Hall named after Francesco Arcangeli, equipped for conferences, meetings and lectures; the multimedia Hall dedicated to Malvasia and lastly the Salone degli Incamminati, huge exhibition space for shows of ancient, modern and contemporary artists. The reviews that have already been held (Simone Contarini, the Spanish Seicento, the Italian Seicento in the collection of Sir Dennis Mahon) will be followed by others dedicated to Virgilio Guidi, Mario Sironi and Alberto Burri.
The Academy and the Art Gallery, guaranteed by the competent authority of the national heritage authorities, are united in the task of dealing with the theme of our artistic heritage, opening up further teaching experiences for our studies.
Here in Bologna, as elsewhere, our intention is to restore a meaning and a purpose to artistic working in the complete critical awareness of the history and the art of our times, in other words, opening towards new trends, providing a method that is not merely didactic but that is an essential instrument towards constructing and, at the same time, learning a continuously renewed model of the anthropological ideals handed down to us by history.
The Director
Vittorio Mascalchi
Back to top