Activating Sculpture: The Curatorial Program of Sculture nella città

This article examines the curatorial program of Sculture nella città, an outdoor sculpture exhibition in Spoleto, Italy during the summer of 1962. Aided by the patronage of the national steel conglomerate Italsider, the curator of the exhibition, Giovanni Carandente, made explicit connections between emergent postwar industry and the new materials, growing scale, and unconventional display embraced by contemporary sculptors. Crucial to achieving this goal was a calculated public relations campaign, bolstered by thousands of photographs by Ugo Mulas that substantiated Carandente’s curatorial decisions. The photographs show how Sculture nella città institutionalized sculpture as something activated, not completed, through its installation.