Pesaro – A project that in just four years has inspired some Italian cities, starting from Milan, to dedicate monuments to great women, naming streets and public places and placing plaques. The Pesaro Pensa association now supports the idea of EveryOne Group, asking the municipality in the Marche region to honor its forgotten women. While Milan has sculptures dedicated to Alda Merini Milan, 1931 – 2009) and Giuseppina Pizzigoni (Milan, 1870 – Saronno, 1947) in the works for this 2024, Pesaro has already responded by showing attention towards the proposal for a monument to Renata Tebaldi.
“The councilor for Beauty Daniele Vimini – explains Roberto Malini representing the associations – has already paid attention to the request and has ensured that he has the project for a sculpture of the great soprano from Pesaro on his agenda. But the dialogue with the institutions will continue in the future, focused on a virtuous path that honors the women who brought prestige to Pesaro. Not all of them will be able to have a monument, because Pesaro had a large number of illustrious daughters. However, this can be remedied with toponymy, the affixing of plaques and, if our institutions listen to us, the creation of a Women’s Museum”. In fact, last year, some associations had loudly asked not to transform part of the Complesso della Misericordia in via della Vetreria, an eighteenth-century work by Giannandrea Lazzarini and his illustrious pupil Tommaso Bicciaglia, into common housing, but to make it the seat of a Women’s Museum, unique in Europe, presenting the project to the institutions during an evening at the Hotel Alexander.
“We talked about it – continues Malini – obtaining consensus from art historians, architects and also from institutional figures. The Superintendency, as is right, would appreciate an enhancement in this sense of the architectural structure and the courtyard behind the splendid church. However, we were told that the Municipality has now sold the entire complex to Erap and that retracing its steps is difficult”. The associations, however, do not give up and continue to appeal to the municipal administration so that the ideal location of a Women’s Museum is not lost forever which, next to the restored church, could be housed in the spaces that housed the orphans of Pesaro, protected in that institution, but also subjected to discrimination and deprived of their fundamental rights.
“They called them ‘sluts’ both because they wore wooden clogs and in a disparaging sense. They were courageous young women, who personified the very current concept of resilience. It would be nice if their sacrifice and their strength of spirit were remembered there. And that in the same place, women, too often victims of a repressive and patriarchal culture, were celebrated in a modern way. The great Mexican artist Elina Chauvet – inventor of the ‘red shoes’, symbol of the fight for women’s rights and against feminicide – who I contacted when I drew up the project for the Women’s Museum, made herself available. The idea of such an important memorial in the Misericordia Complex excites her. Although it is a complex dialogue and there is still an institutional wall in front of those who support the initiative, we will continue to propose it, hoping that one day we will not come across the bulldozers of Erap, which would put an end to all hope. Regarding, then, the women to be honored and remembered, in Pesaro there are many, often victims of institutional amnesia. I mention a few: Elisabetta Malatesta, Michelina da Pesaro, Renata Tebaldi, Sara Levi Nathan, Annamaria Alberghetti, Vittoria Mosca, Sandra Barba Mondaini, Antonietta Pallerini, Cesira Bacchiani, Wanda Biagini Coen, Liliana Renzi, Maria Luisa Bonelli Righini, Rosina Frulla. They have given so much to our city, but we have almost forgotten them. Let’s fix the mistake.”
In the photos, Sara Levi Nathan and Renata Tebaldi
Press
