Another prestigious milestone achieved by Peccioli, the town that has become an open-air museum was elected
Il Borgo dei Borghi 2024.
Following a long competition, with online voting and a jury of three experts. who evaluated the various competing small towns, Peccioli won first place in the RAI competition of the most beautiful borghi in Italy.
Trash to Beauty:
A Case Study of how Peccioli, a small Tuscan hillside town, turned a landfill
into an engine of social, economic, ecological, political and cultural change.
Curated by Brett Littman
On view from February 19 to May 3, 2024
at the Italian Cultural Institute
686 Park Avenue, NY
Mon. through Fri. 10AM to 4PM
Sat. 11AM to 4PM
In this exhibition, the curator, Brett Littman, looks at how contemporary culture came to Peccioli and the impact it has made. Through images, a documentary film by the curator and Francesco Mazzei, and architectural models, Littman shows the radically different path the town of Peccioli took – one that places it in the center of a self-sustaining Venn diagram which prioritizes quality of life, ecology, civic infrastructure, culture, economic development, and social energy.
Around the world there are many towns, cities, and municipalities that have co-opted or used contemporary art, architecture or creatives (Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class published in 2002 lays out the blueprint for this) to burnish reputations, generate tourism and regenerate the economies of seemingly “dying” places. Art and Architecture Biennale’s, film, dance, literary or theater festivals and other site-specific “events” bring tourist dollars and publicity – but in the end they are like alien spaceships landing and then taking off again – making very little impact on the long term survival and growth of the local communities they need for labor, resources and they don’t generally compensate for the wear and tear they create on the host communities ecology and their inhabitants long term financial stability. As well, if these projects are more permanent – they often don’t sympathetically engage with their surroundings and feel out of place.