Veronica Caciolli is an Italian art historian, curator, and lecturer. Her interests are mainly focused on the relationships between contemporary art and the archaic.
She’s been educated in Philosophy at Florence University and in Humanities at DAMS (Disciplines of Visual and Performing Arts, Music, and Media – Bologna University) with a master’s degree in Phenomenology of Styles with the renowned art critic and curator Renato Barilli. She then completed a series of advanced studies in Curating and Art Critique, History of Religions, Anthropology of Art, and Western Esotericism in Berlin, Rome, Milan, and London (Node Center, La Sapienza University, Bicocca University, Treadwell’s). She also holds an MRes in Cultural, Intellectual, and Visual History at Warburg Institute.
While writing for art magazines such as Segno, Exibart, Memecult, from 2005 to 2007 she was in charge of institutional exhibitions and publications for Photology (Bologna-Milan), managing projects such as Mario Giacomelli curated by Enzo Cucchi at Senigallia Town Council Museum, Beat&Pieces – Photographs by Allen Ginsberg at Fondazione Giovanna Piras in Asti, the solo by Joel-Peter Witkin at Palazzo Mediceo, Seravezza or publications such as Claudio Abate’s monograph edited by Achille Bonito Oliva.
After assisting Professor Carrara at Gonzaga University in Florence, in 2008 she won a national competition as curator of XX and XXI centuries collections at Mart, Museum of Modern and Contemporary art of Trento and Rovereto. There, from 2011 to 2015 she served as curator of contemporary art exhibits, such as: #collezionemart, Project Wall, Scenario di terra, There and again. Souvenir de voyage, The magnificient obsession, With the eyes, the heart and the mind. Photographs from the Trevisan Collection.
In 2013 together with Denis Isaia and Federico Mazzonelli she curated Der Blitz. Research, Action and Contemporary Culture, setting up Mag, Museo Alto Garda’s first contemporary program.
In parallel, she has conducted field research in Sardinia (Orgosolo, Santa Chiara, Bitti), Central America (Mexico, Jamaica, Cuba, Panama), Sri Lanka, Indonesia (Celebes, Bali, Komodo Archipelago), Thailand (Bangkok, Chiang Mai), India (Rajasthan, Varanasi, Kolkata, Odisha), South Pacific: Vanuatu Islands (Efate, Malekula, Ambrym, Espiritu Santo), Cook Islands (Rarotonga, Aitutaki).
She entertains a special bond with Thailand, starting in 2015 with the exhibit One to Many in Mae Rim (Chiang Mai) where she grouped seven Thai artists and two Australian ones gathered by political, religious, and community issues. In 2017 in collaboration with curator Pier Luigi Tazzi and the Thai Ministry of Culture, she curated the first Italian solo show of the Thai (and legendary) National Artist Inson Wongsam at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. In 2018 and 2024 she was invited to curate two other solos of his at Chiang Mai Art Museum and Noname Gallery. In 2022 she connected him and Rampad Kothkaew with Tarshito for his collaborative project The Camp of The Wayfarers in Love, supported by The Italian Embassy in Thailand and The Region of Apulia, held at River City Space in Bangkok. She also homaged Pier Luigi Tazzi’s career at Silpakorn University in 2022 and Inson Wongsam’s in 2024.
From 2016 to 2019 she focused on symbolic cultural stratifications of time at Palazzo Pretorio Museum in Prato (IT) “by pursuing the evident arbitrariness of a continuous and infinite process of redefinition, based on a past that is itself in an eternal state of rediscovery and revaluation” (Lawrence Gowing). Throughout Pretorio Studio, invited artists such as Paola Angelini, Gea Brown, Dan-I and THX, Sadi Oortmood, Luigi Presicce and l’Accademia dell’immobilità, Luca Scarlini and Maria Caterina Frani, Simone Pellegrini, have confronted with classical masterpieces by Donatello, Filippo and Filippino Lippi, Lorenzo Bartolini, Jacques Lipchitz, throughout a residency and a final exhibit/performance.
She has promoted the recent work by Lisa Batacchi throughout the complex relationships between ethnic minorities and globalization, culminating in the curation of her solo, two publications, and many public talks.
In 2019 she launched the symposium Art, the Mystique, Community featuring artists, philosophers, collectors, and scholars, culminating in the publications of the proceedings. The second edition occurred at Musec, Museo delle Culture in Lugano (February 2022).
Recently, she has grouped the main Florentine religious communities and six contemporary artists for the spread exhibition Re-Enchanting the World, at Ewam Buddhist Tibetan Center, the Mosque, the Synagogue, Santa Felicita’s Church, Villa Vrindavana, and Semiottagono, with the support of the Town Council of Florence (May 2022).
Aryan Ozmaei. Third Space exhibit inaugurated in 2023 her triennial collaboration with MAD Murate Art District and The Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in Florence. The second event with sound artist SADI, has taken place in February-March 2024.
She has lectured at many conferences and published her essays, among others, with Silvana Editoriale, Electa Mondadori, Gli Ori, Wip, Postmedia Books, and Mousse Publishing.
She currently teaches Style, History of Art and Costume at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna, Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts, Contemporary Art History, Art Pedagogy, and Semiotics of Art at IED, Istituto Europeo di Design, and at Laba, Libera Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.
