Thesis title: Arte sacra contemporanea nel Santuario di San Gabriele: nuove prospettive di lettura
The aim of this doctoral thesis is the creation of a reasoned catalogue of the
artworks currently preserved in the Sanctuary of San Gabriele
dell’Addolorata and in the Staurós Museum of Contemporary Sacred Art,
located on the Gran Sasso Island of Italy, in the province of Teramo. The
largest part of the collection consists of works exhibited during the fifteen
editions of the Biennale of Sacred Art, held from 1984 to 2012.
The first step in creating the catalogue involved a photographic campaign
aimed at documenting the artworks, followed by a historical-critical
analysis conducted through the consultation of bibliographic sources,
archival documentation, and photographic material. Each artwork was
recorded using a specific OAC card in accordance with ICCD standards. It
was then entered into a database created with Microsoft Access software to
ensure a functional, accessible and shareable cataloguing system designed
to promote the critical engagement with the works and support future
research activities by art historians, curators, and scholars, contributing to
the preservation and enhancement of the artistic heritage of the Staurós
Museum.
The necessity of this work arises from the suspension of the Biennale in
2013, caused by the lack of a manager and a shortage of public funds, which
interrupted the continuity of the exhibition project and prevented a
systematic survey of the artistic heritage accumulated over more than thirty
years of activity. For this reason, the catalogue developed here seeks to
respond to the urgent need to enhance the cultural contribution of the
Staurós Museum, showing how contemporary artistic languages are part of
a semantic continuity that can be traced back to the theme of the Passion of
Christ, as a polysemic and generative subject of contemporary sacred art.