Library

Library for Contemporary Arts

The Library for Contemporary Arts offers access to the collection of volumes, catalogs, essays, and 20th- and 21st-century art publications, gathered by its founder, Giuseppe Morra, during his decades-long career as a collector and promoter of contemporary culture. Officially opened to the public in 2003, it consists in more than 10,000 volumes registered in the OPAC SBN Catalog of the National Library Service, as well as journals, manuscripts, and limited editions currently being cataloged.

The Library’s holdings specifically consist of:

1. a) books and documents from the thirteen bibliographic collections, specifically: General Art; Futurism; Dadaism; Happenings; Viennese Actionism; Visual Poetry; Mario Franco Archives; Luca Maria Patella; Arrigo Lora Totino Archives; Gutai Group; Living Theatre; Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics; Maurizio Elettrico; all materials are recorded in dedicated inventories;
2. b) catalogs, bibliographic archives, databases;
3. c) equipment and furnishings;
4. d) buildings intended to host the library service’s operational facilities.

The Library for Contemporary Arts enacts the following activities:

1. a) collects, organizes, and prepares for public use books, periodicals, publications, documentary material in any medium, and anything else useful for information, documentation, and free reading regarding contemporary arts;
2. b) collects and preserves documents and testimonies regarding contemporary art;
3. c) promotes studies, publications, and school and university research on contemporary art;
4. d) prepares and organizes studies, debates, exhibitions, and activities focusing on written, electronic, and audiovisual information on contemporary arts;
5. e) contributes to the implementation of the right to education and lifelong learning; provides assistance to students and promotes collaboration with educational institutions.

The access to the Library is free.

The Library is divided with the following sections:

• GENERAL ART (from 1930 to the present)
• FUTURISM
• DADAISM
• HAPPENINGS AND FLUXUS
• VIENNESE ACTIONISM
• GUTAI
• VISUAL POETRY
• SECTIONS DEDICATED TO ARTISTS

The Library also has donations and collections:

1. Mario Franco Archives: consisting mainly of cinema texts with some sections dedicated to analogue photography, the avant-gardes of the ’20s and ’60s, art and art criticism, philosophy;
2. Arrigo Lora Totino Fund: consisting of monographic volumes by Arrigo Lora Totino (Turin, 1928-2016) and books of Italian and International Visual and Sound Poetry;
3. Luca Maria Patella Fund: the creative artistic approach of Luca Maria Patella (Rome 1934 – 2023) as a tireless explorer of media art. Among the first artists to experiment with multimedia: from graphics to analogue photography (inventive), from the artist’s book to film-opera and video, to the use of the body in performances, from psychoanalytic investigation to interdisciplinary analysis between art and science;
4. LIVING THEATRE Fund: Julian Beck (1925-1985), performer and set designer, co-founder with Judith Malina (1926-2015) of the Living Theatre (1947 to date). They joined anarchist pacifism in 1949, and with the Living Theatre’s the couple had always dedicated their research to themes such as coercive violence and social repression, capitalist exploitation versus mutual aid;
5. Maurizio Elettrico Fund: Maurizio Elettrico (Naples, 1965) after studying Natural Sciences, he oriented his artistic research to the interdisciplinary relationships between philosophy, history and iconography.