By Ana-Maria Milcic, CHASE funded student at The Courtauld Institute of Art
During my CHASE placement at the Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral, in Rijeka in present-day Croatia, I worked as a co-curator on an exhibition titled D’Annunzio’s Martyr which marks the centenary of the Italian occupation of this city. Looking into the position of women during the occupation and the role of female figures in political rhetoric the exhibition told a completely different narrative from the one in Trieste, where there was also a show about the same historical event. In Rijeka, a group of Italian neo-fascists staged demonstrations in front of the museum, and the exhibition opening was held with heavy police protection. The occupation of Rijeka in 1919 is considered among historian a critical moment in the genealogy of fascism, and it is still an important reference point for the Italian far right. The exhibition − part of the Rijeka European Capital of Culture 2020 project − got an extraordinary amount of press coverage because of the demonstration and the comparisons with the Trieste exhibition.
My research at the Courtauld is about this same event in history, but exploring the role it played in Italian avant-garde art, more specifically within a movement called Futurism. Working on this exhibition with a curator who was a historian provided not only a border historical contextualization for my research but also pushed in into a different and more interdisciplinary direction. My PhD is about art and political ideologies between the two world wars; during my CHASE placement, I witnessed first-hand how the local authorities of two countries reacted differently to the same cultural event and how reviews of the exhibition could be easily predicted based on the political alignment of the newspaper. Doing an international placement is an excellent chance for CHASE students to develop transferable and practical skills and get working experience while still doing their PhD. This can be a particularly rewarding experience if students seek to make their own placement arrangements, in other words, approach institution and design a partnership tailored to the needs of the student and the requirements of a specific project within the partner institution. My placement was particularly useful for gaining skills that ensure the wider impact of research.
My duties included conducting research for the exhibition (including archival research in Italy and Croatia), organizing museum loans and communicating with different collections in Italy. I worked closely with the designer, wrote a chapter in the catalogue, and texts for wall panels and leaflets. I learned how to communicate my research to the general public and how to collaborate within a bigger museum team.