Carlo Scarpa began to come into national prominence with several designs for exhibitions. The
first were in Venice: »Paul Klee« (1948) for the 1949 Biennale »Giovanni Bellini« (1949) at
the Palazzo Ducale »Toulouse Lautrec« (1952) at the Palazzo Correr and »Tiepolo« for the 1952
Biennale. Others followed: »Quattrocento« (1953) at Messina town hall and »Piet Mondrian«
(1956) at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. Such commissions finally led him into
the design of museum interiors: among many his most celebrated were the Museo dell'Accademia
(1952-56) and the Museo Correr (1953 to 1969) both in Venice the Palazzo Abbatellis (1953 54)
in Palermo the Gipsoteca Canoviana in Possagno (1955-57) and the Museo di Castelvecchio
(1956-64) in Verona. Scarpa's exhibit designs and museum interiors present a different way of
seeing. On the one hand seeing the object through provision of a sympathetic setting for it
on the other seeing contemporary »modern « architecture in the context of the cultural
continuum that has carried it to where it now momentarily hovers. The Museo di Castelvecchio
was developed on the bombed ruins of the Scaligery family's medieval castle in Verona. First
commissioned to redesign the oldest section of the building Scarpa was later asked to complete
the museum. The work is a monument to Scarpa's sensibilties about time and place. According to
critic Nory Miller he »achieved an extraordinary coexistence involving architecture of
different centuries including this one ... without the crutches of neutral glass linkages
uniform materials or historical references ... Each angle shape surface is chosen to engage
the attention or participation of the visitor.« Indeed the symbiosis between Scarpa's work and
the surviving fabric is such that differences are hardly apparent. With his infinitive capacity
for fine detailing he touched the past lightly because he was so conscious of continuity the
museum gives the »sense that construction has been supended«. (After Donald Leslie Johnson and
Donald Langmead.) Valeria Carullo is curator of the Robert Elwall Photographs Collection in the
Royal Institute of British Architects Paola Marini is director and Alba Di Lieto curator of
the Musei d'Arte Monumenti of the city of Verona. Richard Bryant is one of the best-known
architectural photographers working all over the world. He is the only photographer with an
honorary fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
