The Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C., is featuring the work of several Pratt-affiliated artists and faculty this fall—Lisa A. Banner, Adjunct Associate Professor in the History of Art and Design; alumna Kikki Ghezzi (B.F.A. Painting/Drawing ’11); and Italian artist Licio Isolani, who served as a professor at Pratt for more than 50 years.  The effort represents a new collaboration with the Italian Embassy, whose Cultural Attaché, Dr. Renato Miracco, came to Pratt last spring to lecture on his area of specialty, the Arte Povera movement. The new Director of the Italian Cultural Institute, Dr. Emanuele Amendola, has also been involved in sponsoring and fostering this new collaboration.

Banner has curated an exhibition titled Frammenti: New Works by Kikki Ghezzi and Riccardo Vecchio. The show, which features the work of northern Italian artists Ghezzi and Riccardo Vecchio, who is a professor at the School of Visual Arts, opens at the Embassy on October 10. In Frammenti, the two artists use family heirlooms and found artifacts as “fragments” of the past to capture Italy’s cultural history. Banner highlights themes of memory, continuity, and remembrance in the show, which coincides with the arrival of work by Isolani from the Licio Isolani Study Archive at Pratt Institute.