In Rome, a Collection of Contemporary American Art Makes a Baroque Statement

A 2018 ink-and-acrylic painting by Lorna Simpson depicts a series of brick building façades in shades of blue, in a photographic style. Its title, Day for Night, refers to a film technique whereby nighttime scenes can be shot in daylight, a typical example of cinematic trickery. Currently, Simpson’s painting hangs in a dazzling neo-Rococo apartment at the top of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. There, it’s the focal point of a major exhibition of the same title, organized around this notion of toying with reality, where works contend with the political, social, and cultural tensions of the United States.

This exhibition, “Day for Night: New American Realism,” draws entirely from the private collection of Beirut-based collectors Tony and Elham Salamé, and is presented through their Aïshti Foundation at Palazzo Barberini through September 8th. The Salamés are among the most prolific and esteemed contemporary art collectors in the world, focused primarily on art of the United States. “Day for Night” gives a striking glimpse into their deep holdings, featuring 150 works by major contemporary artists, including Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Mark Bradford, Faith Ringgold, Tschabalala Self, and Arthur Jafa, to name a few. Co-curated by the New Museum’s Massimiliano Gioni and Palazzo Barberini’s Flaminia Gennari Santori, the exhibition is a strong survey of contemporary American art, not only serving up boundary-pushing interventions within a birthplace of Baroque art, but also boldly surveying some of the most outspoken American artists working today.

“Day for Night” marks the first time that the 17th-century Palazzo Barberini—which usually shows Italian art from the 16th–19th centuries—is host to a full-scale exhibition of contemporary art. Notable, too, is that the exhibition inhabits the palazzo’s Rococo-style apartments—a series of lavishly decorated rooms that are not typically open to the public.

Visitors are thrust into the idea of “American Realism” from the moment they enter the show. “The [Salamés’collection itself suggested the theme of this show because such an important nucleus of works in the collection are by American artists,” Gioni explained. The show builds a picture of the U.S. through artists who are simultaneously documenting and questioning the country’s fraught recent history. Notions of light and dark are also front and center in a nod to Caravaggio, the master of chiaroscuro, as Palazzo Barberini is host to the world’s largest collection of “Caravaggisti” paintings—works by 17th-century artists in the style of the master.

This is clear from the first gallery that the visitor walks into, featuring the works of Nicole Eisenman, Dana Schutz, and Salman Toor. “They all share an interest in the grotesque and in a form of storytelling that doesn’t shy away from a kind of omnipresent darkness,” Gioni said. “Eisenman’s painting Dark Light (2017)—with the image of a person, perhaps an alter ego of the artist, casting the flash of her torch light into the night—seemed to be a perfect allegory for the role of art in exposing the truth in a world in which that very notion is falling apart. It is more than a coincidence that the character holding the flash light is also wearing a red hat, which resembles a ‘MAGA’ hat: Things are more complicated, it seems, than just an allegory for painting and truth.”

“Day for Night” builds upon a previous show, “Dark Light,” named after Eisenman’s work, which was also curated by Gioni, and held at Aïshti Foundation in Beirut in 2022. This new iteration of the show speaks directly to the Italian setting and the present moment. “Some works returned in both shows, but the focus in Rome is more specific,” Gioni said. “It is the Baroque of illusion and propaganda, of spectacles and trompe l’oeil, of opulence and religion that was born in Palazzo Barberini, with all its mysterious combinations of the organic and the inorganic, of the artificial and the natural—an art that deliberately confuses reality and fiction.” This premise was pivotal to the curator’s decision to delve into “American Realism.”

Now, with the forthcoming election in the U.S., which is only exacerbating the issues the featured artists address in their works—from racism and bigotry to climate change and migration—the show feels all the more relevant. “The focus on America, particularly in this specific year, also adds a different spin—almost a vertigo, I am afraid,” Gioni said, “around conversations and debates that are bound to become more and more heated.”

In one room on the ground floor, which Gioni fondly referred to as “the crazy landscape room,” works by Nate Lowman, Matthew Wong, Josh Smith, Shara Hughes, and Sterling Ruby allude to the climate crisis through intense technicolor scenery and depictions of storms and destruction. Nearby, works by Andra Ursuta, Joan Semmel, Sanya Kantarovsky, Richard Prince, and Janiva Ellis offer a “rhapsody about bodies,” as the curator put it. Here, raw and robust depictions of the female form inevitably surface the American contention around women’s bodily autonomy.

The show also revels in the contrast of its antiquated setting and the cutting-edge contemporary art on display, particularly through a series of interventions on the upper floors. A massive Urs Fischer sculpture of a horse crossed with a hospital bed—reenvisioning the tradition of equestrian sculpture—sits in the atrium, just before the masterful 17th-century staircase designed by Francesco Borromini. Meanwhile, Maurizio Cattelan pigeons perch within the Atrio Bernini on the other side of the building.

Elsewhere, a lofty new Charles Ray sculpture reimagines the archangel figure, transforming the classical figure into a softly rendered surfer type. It’s set in the Sala Ovale, within eyesight of both the massive Pietro da Cortona ceiling fresco The Triumph of Divine Providence (1632–39) and a statue of Apollo outside in the gardens.

Most notable, however, is the dazzling series of rooms of the Rococo apartment, where Gioni has leaned heavily into abstraction and the works of Black artists. “Amidst the textures of silk wallpapers, frescoes, marble, and mirrors, a distinct value system emerges in these apartments,” Gioni noted. The charged environment of excess, as well as colonialism, evidenced through murals depicting Indigenous peoples, required a deft curatorial hand. The curation here is focused less on “the grotesque and the interplay of darkness and light,” and instead on “textures and abstraction,” Gioni said.

“I began exploring the works of artists like Frank Bowling, Peter Bradley, Melvin Edwards, Sam Gilliam, and Jack Whitten, who, in the 1960s and early 1970s, balanced abstraction with political engagement,” Gioni noted. “These Black painters advocated for their right to be formalist and abstract, challenging the notion that their work must illustrate the struggles of the African American community during the Civil Rights Movement.” These rooms also feature Lebanese artists, a clear nod to Salamé’s background, as well as younger generations of Black artists, who also powerfully confront history and politics without illustrating it figuratively.

Another exemplary contrast of old and new comes together in the vast salon-style hang in the Sala Marmi, featuring works by Ludovic Nkoth, Anna Weyant, Jordan Casteel, and Derrick Adams, among dozens of others, each offering unique approaches to portraiture.

“The salon hanging—with its vertiginous stacking of works—was a feature used by many collectors of the 17th century: It was a symbol of wealth, power, and connoisseurship,” said Gioni. These portraits, many with elements of the grotesque that Gioni weaves throughout the ground floor of the exhibition, challenge the Western canon of art history, and its narrow conceptions of beauty, and visions of power.

That room also speaks to the massive logistical undertaking that realizing this show required. “The Sala Marmi salon hanging is basically a whole new room inside a room, built on a system of scaffolding that supports the walls on which the 60-plus paintings are hung,” Gioni explained. The challenges of transporting artworks from Beirut and around the world to the historic Palazzo Barberini, and installing them in such a protected, landmarked building, were daunting, Gioni explained. “It is prohibited to even put in one single nail in the wall,” he noted.

Yet those challenges never deterred Tony Salamé, who had long dreamt of mounting a show in Italy, due to his strong connection with the country—a passion that grew from his first visit as a teen to his extensive travels for his work with fashion and luxury brands, leading him to gain Italian citizenship. The opportunity to set the show at Palazzo Barberini compelled Salamé from the beginning. “I was blown away by the beauty of the place,” Salamé said. “Rome has the cachet. Plus, there is this dialogue with Palazzo Barberini and the collection.”