ARGUING WITH THE PAST:
CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN ART FROM ARTE POVERA TO THE PRESENT
A conversation with Francesco Dama e Stefano Collicelli Cagol
Tuesday, November 3, 2026 | 6:30 PM
Italian Cultural Institute @INNOVIT, 710 Sansome St, San Francisco
Event open to the public | Registration required
What does it mean to make art in Italy today, a country whose artistic past is both an extraordinary legacy and a difficult act to follow? Francesco Dama and Stefano Collicelli Cagol explore how Italian artists have grappled with this inheritance across generations. From the international recognition of Arte Povera and the Transavanguardia to the shifting landscape of the early 2000s and the increasingly diverse art scene of today, the conversation considers how artists draw on, challenge, and break away from tradition to make room for new voices and possibilities.
Stefano Collicelli Cagol will join the event remotely from Italy via Zoom for a conversation with Francesco Dama, who will moderate the discussion in person at the Italian Cultural Institute.
Event organized under the auspices of the Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco.
ABOUT
Francesco Dama is a Director at Jessica Silverman, an international contemporary art gallery based in San Francisco. Before joining the gallery, he worked at Marlborough Gallery in London and Galleria Lorcan O’Neill in Rome. His experience spans exhibition curation, editing, and writing on contemporary art and culture for a range of print and online publications.
He holds a BA in Art History and the History and Conservation of Artistic Heritage from the University of Florence and an MA in Art History from Sapienza University of Rome.
Stefano Collicelli Cagol, Ph.D., is Director General of the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato, Italy. He is a member of the Contemporary Art Steering Committee established by the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiC) and the Contemporary Art Foundations Committee.
In 2022, he was part of the curatorial team for the inaugural MUNCH Museum Triennale, titled The Machine Is Us. In 2021, he curated the exhibitions A Show About Nothing and Architecture and Dreaming for BY ART MATTERS in Hangzhou, China.
From 2018 to 2020, he was a curator at the Quadriennale di Roma Foundation, where he curated Quadriennale d’arte 2020: FUORI at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. He has taught in the MA program in Design for Arts at the Polytechnic University of Turin.
From 2015 to 2017, he was Curator at Large at the Trondheim Kunstmuseum in Norway. He earned his PhD from the Royal College of Art in London in 2014.
He has curated exhibitions and projects at institutions including Palazzo Grassi in Venice; LUX Artists’ Moving Image in London; steirischer herbst festival in Graz; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin; and Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice.
His essays have appeared in exhibition catalogues and publications including Stedelijk Studies, Domus, Flash Art, and Mousse.