The Contemporary Archive of the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca collects drawings by artists and academic architects of the 1900s and contemporaries who wanted to entrust the institution with what was elaborated throughout their work experience (they are present, among others, the funds of the architects Mario Ridolfi, Mario De Renzi, Ugo Luccichenti, Maurizio Sacripanti, Carlo Chiarini) or who donated selected sheets exhibited by the Academy in the exhibition ” For a collection of Contemporary Design” (Rome, 2009) and works exhibited in the exhibition ” The collection of Contemporary Academic Masters” (Rome, 2010), officially inaugurated on the occasion of the reopening of some rooms of the Academic Gallery.

The exhibition intends to underline the current opening of the Academy towards the contemporary design of artists, sculptors and architects, in order to build a new “fund” to the interior of the already large historical collections of the Academy (with figure and architecture drawings, starting from the end of the sixteenth century), background, specifically dedicated to this particular expressive moment of contemporary creativity.

In located in the mezzanine floor exhibition spaces will be placed drawings that led to the genesis of the works, thus putting in place a fruitful dialogue at a distance between the contemporary artist and the works of the past, those of the Cavalier d’Arpino, the Bernini, by Gaulli, Batoni or Cades, for example, or some of the protagonists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries whose works are preserved in the Ariccia Museum, and who are present among the ranks of artists who made life extraordinary and the history of the Accademia di San Luca. In Lorenzetti dialogue is also that of the passage from sense to sign, which intersects with the dialogue between the arts of drawing itself.

Contemporary room
The functional framework the building has today is due to the radical intervention made between 1933 and 1934 under the direction of Gustavo Giovannoni and Arnaldo Foschini, with the purpose of transforming the palace into an adequate seat for the Academy. In the new building, inaugurated in the 24th of April 1934, the first floor is dedicated to contemporary art and architecture exhibitions

Conference room – Red room
The functional framework the building has today is due to the radical intervention made between 1933 and 1934 under the direction of Gustavo Giovannoni and Arnaldo Foschini, with the purpose of transforming the palace into an adequate seat for the Academy.

Academic Gallery
Part of the academic collections are exhibited in the Gallery – located on the third and top floor of Palazzo Carpegna. Other works are located in the academic rooms, in the secretariat offices, in the conference room, located on the main floor, as well as in the Academic Library, in the Sarti Library and in the Historical Archive which are located on the second floor. The rest of the collections are kept in deposits located on the ground floor or along the helical ramp.

In October 2010 the Gallery, renovated according to a museum exhibition project developed by Angela Cipriani, Marisa Dalai Emiliani, Pia Vivarelli (who disappeared in 2008) as Superintendents of the Gallery and the Academic Collections, reopened to the public in almost all of its rooms.

The new layout was designed, in collaboration with the academic architect Francesco Cellini, following the most up-to-date criteria, that is, using the same exhibition order to immediately and effectively return the idea of the Academy itself over the centuries.

The restoration of the works of painting and sculpture, made necessary by the long past period of storage of the works, entrusted to the care of Fabio Porzio, was joined by the now usual research laboratory on restoration methods, always directed by Fabio Porzio, particularly interesting. for the variety of materials and therefore the richness of the relative problems. We also proceeded to reread the archival documents, in order to reconstruct the historical and current consistency of the academic collections.

National Academy of San Luca
The Accademia Nazionale di San Luca is an association of artists from Rome, officially founded in 1593 by Federico Zuccari, who was also its first director (Prince), with the assumption of raising the work of the artists above simple craftsmanship.

The National Academy of Saint Luca has its origin in the institution established between the late 1500s and early 1600s when an ancient confraternity of painters associated with the Università delle Arti della Pittura held meetings at the little church of San Luca all’Esquilino in Rome (the church has since been demolished). In 1577 a papal bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII at the urging of the painter Girolamo Muziano instituted the Accademia delle Arti della Pittura, della Scultura e del Disegno (the “Academy of the Arts of Painting, of Sculpture and of Drawing”), but it would be 1593 before the Academy was symbolically “founded” by Federico Zuccari with the formal approval of the original statutes of the Accademia de i Pittori e Scultori di Roma (the “Academy of the Painters and Sculptors of Rome” – but not architects, who were first welcomed into the ranks of the Academy only in 1634, when Pietro da Cortona was “Prince” of the institution).

In 1934, following the demolition of the Academy’s historical seat next to the church of Santi Luca e Martina – to make way for the new Via dell’Impero running through the Roman Forum – the Academy moved to its current headquarters in Palazzo Carpegna. From its foundation onwards, the Academy’s activities had always included teaching, in the form of conferences, symposia and courses in painting, sculpture and architecture, but in 1874 this aspect of the Academy’s work was delegated to the Reale Istituto di Belle Arti (now known as the Accademia di Belle Arti), while the Academy itself was charged with organising cultural activities intended to enrich and promote the fine arts.

Today such work continues via the publication of books regarding the Academy and its history, the organisation of exhibitions at the Academy’s headquarters, the safeguarding and conservation of its physical patrimony and the loaning of works from the Academy’s collections (drawings, paintings and sculptures) for display in national and international exhibitions. The Academy, also, focuses on young artists and scholars in particular through the distribution of scholarships and prizes.