“When I read about the nineteen-twenties today, I feel I might be reading about butterflies, and that the contemporary critic has turned entomologist…The butterfly never settles on any flower for long.”
-Harold Acton
Transatlantic Modernities: Villa La Pietra in the Twenties is a compound and transversal collection exhibition project that was active from 2014-2017. The project originated from the exploration of the Acton family home, guests, objects and artistic milieu during the “Roaring Twenties”. Those years saw the establishment of the Actons as prestigious members of Florentine society, art collectors and extraordinary hosts with impeccable taste–entertaining many Italian and Foreign intellectuals and artists within their renowned villa. During this time of peace and prosperity, before the Great Depression of 1929, great advances were made in both social rights and technology–womens’ suffrage, the invention of the car, radio, etc. On the cultural side, as Harold Acton wrote of the vibrant flowering of artistic production—and the ” butterflies” that created them—from poetry and literature to the fashion of ‘flapper’ dress, music, dance, theater and art, resulted in a rich and multifaceted decade.
For more information about this project please contact florence.collection@nyu.edu
