Istituto Svizzero di Roma

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Istituto Svizzero di Roma (ISR)
founding 1947
Sponsorship Foundation of the Swiss Confederation and other partners
place Rome and Milan , Italy
director Joëlle Comé
Website www.istitutosvizzero.it/de

The Istituto Svizzero di Roma ( ISR ) is a Swiss cultural institute under private law in Rome. Its mission is to offer students and artists the opportunity to work in Rome and Italy in order to promote scientific and cultural exchange between Switzerland and Italy .

history

The Villa Maraini in Rome

On December 27, 1947, the donated Swiss Federal Council , the private law Swiss Institute di Roma (ISR), which on August 4, 1948 based in the Villa Maraini on the Pincio instituted and was opened by Federal Judge Plinio Bolla 1949th The villa was a gift from Countess Carolina Maraini-Sommaruga (1869–1959), who was raised to the nobility , and the childless widow of the Swiss industrialist Emilio Maraini (1853–1916). Like his wife Carolina Sommaruga, he came from Lugano and became known in Italy for the industrial extraction of sugar from beet . Carolina Maraini-Sommaruga handed over the Villa Maraini to the Swiss Confederation in 1946. On the occasion of the handover it was stated that the Villa Maraini should always be in the service of culture, under the sign of cooperation between Switzerland and Italy.

Following the realignment, which was decided by the Swiss Federal Council in 2004, the ISR gained two new institutional partners: the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) and the Swiss Cultural Foundation Pro Helvetia . Together with the Federal Office for Buildings and Logistics , the Swiss cantons and private sponsors, they carry the ISR. The support of SERI enables the ISR to make an important contribution to maintaining the relationship between Swiss and Italian research through scientific activities and conferences.

In 2005, the ISR was also commissioned by Pro Helvetia to officially manage Switzerland's cultural promotion in Italy. This order was carried out from 1997 to 2005 by the CCS, the Centro Culturale Svizzero di Milano . The event program of the CSS has also been developed by the ISR since 2005. Until March 2012, the ISR also directed the events of the Swiss Cultural Institute in Venice .

With its two branches in Rome and Milan, the ISR leads the main contribution to the official Swiss cultural promotion in Italy.

organization

The ISR is headed by a board of trustees made up of various cultural and social representatives as well as a representative of the family of the founder, Carolina Maraini-Sommaruga. The board of trustees sets up an executive committee, which is composed of the president and three elected council members. The committee accompanies the activities of the ISR and has its own financial skills.

The work of the Board of Trustees is also supported by two commissions: the Art Commission and the University Commission. In addition to various other responsibilities, these commissions accompany the selection and work of the institute members during their stay at the ISR; they also support those responsible for the artistic and scientific program or, if necessary, the management.

The Board of Trustees appoints the directorate that heads the ISR in order to develop it into a center for artistic and scientific creation in accordance with the statutes and the requirements of the Board of Trustees.

The director is supported by a person responsible for the artistic program (Head of Arts Program) and a person responsible for the scientific program (Head of Research Program) as well as by an administrator . These in turn work together with the relevant employees at the headquarters and at the branches in Milan and Venice.

In 2008 the foundation secretariat was relocated from the Federal Office of Culture in Bern to the ISR headquarters in Rome.

assignment

Since its founding, the ISR has pursued the goal of offering young Swiss people the opportunity to deepen their knowledge or artistic skills, to do research or to pursue other independent work in a center for classical culture. The ISR is intended to further promote the scientific and artistic activities of Switzerland by offering students and artists favorable conditions for a stay in Italy. Ultimately, it is the task of the ISR to promote scientific and cultural relations between Switzerland and Italy.

For this purpose, the ISR accommodates between ten and twelve members each year, who are artists and students from Swiss universities . During an academic year, they have the opportunity to stay at the ISR and pursue their scientific or artistic activities.

Library

When the institute was founded in 1948, the ISR library was also opened with an exhibition of Swiss books. The holdings of the ISR library are based on donations from the most important Swiss publishing houses and on the exchange of duplicates with other libraries. In addition there were the extensive estates of Adolphe Holzer and Carolina Maraini-Sommaruga.

Thanks to the support of Pro Helvetia and numerous private patrons, the ISR library has been able to compile a collection of basic literature, ancient and modern literature and, above all, works with reference to Italy over the years. Numerous donations from professors and academics, scholarship holders and guests of the ISR as well as from other libraries helped the ISR to expand this inventory. Special mention should be made of the entire collection of François Lasserre and the estate of Hanno Helbling , which were donated to the holdings of the ISR library.

In order to meet the requirements of an institute that has seen itself as a reference for the artistic and scientific activities of Switzerland in Italy since its foundation, the scope of the ISR library was expanded. On the one hand it ensures the documentation service for the scientific activities within the ISR, on the other hand it sees itself as a center in which Swiss art is to be collected, studied and promoted in Italy.

Since 2005, the ISR library has been accessible not only to the staff and members of the institute, but also to the public. In addition, the collection of the ISR library was digitally recorded. In order to regulate access to this database, the ISR library decided to join the URBS (Unione Romana delle Biblioteche Scientifiche) general catalog ; it is thus part of the network of Roman libraries for the humanities and social sciences .

Publications

The most important research contributions are published in the Bibliotheca Helvetica Romana series .

Directors

literature

  • Michael P. Fritz: The Villa Maraini in Rome. A historically late example of Roman villa culture. (Swiss Art Guide, No. 642). Ed. Society for Swiss Art History GSK. Bern 1998, ISBN 978-3-85782-642-9 .
  • Noelle Laetitia Perret: L'Institut suisse de Rome (1945-2013). Entre culture, politique et diplomatie . Neuchâtel 2014, ISBN 978-2-940489-99-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Axel Christoph Gampp: Nice prospects: More exchange, more presence, more success - the Swiss Institute in Rome on the move . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . No. 159 . Zurich July 11, 2011, p. 31 .
  2. ↑ http://www.web.reteurbs.org/

Web links

Coordinates: 41 ° 54 '24.1 "  N , 12 ° 29' 15.7"  E