The women’s literature of Scrittrici Insieme finds a home in Gallarate

Scrittrici Insieme, the Festival of Women’s Literature, is moving the MAGA Museum in Gallarate. The museum of modern art will be the venue of the fifth year of the festival, which takes place from 29 to 31 May. This is an important change for a small, albeit important festival, which began in 2011, which took place, four years running, in Samarate, and which managed to combine art and music with literature; with the involvement of the writers Elisabetta Severina, Helena Janeczek and Silvana Baldini, it has found an ideal setting in the “post-industrial, only apparently distracted, suburb”, that is capable of making its voice heard (every now and again) in the Milanese metropolis. The four festivals of “images, thoughts and relationships produced collaborations even outside the festival.”

The new challenges that arose in Villa Montevecchio (which is run by a special Foundation, and is now also geared to providing services for start-up businesses) and the central importance of the MAGA Museum during the months of the exhibition Missoni Arte e Colore, led to the “leap” to Gallarate. “Having such an important museum, such beautiful architecture, in Gallarate, led us to a more current and modern dimension, to make a leap of, also cultural, quality,” Silvana Baldini explained. Thus, literature will be found also to converse with contemporary art.

Just over one month before the beginning, there has already been some advance information about the programme of meetings, on which the writers are working, with the support of Anna Carù, of the Carù Bookshop, in Gallarate. One of the more significant moments is “a conversation between Rosita Missoni and Inge Feltrinelli,” an interesting meeting of two women (the designer and the publisher and photographer) who were part of the cultural circles of Milan in the second half of the twentieth century. And here, the “fifth” of the MAGA Museum is proving to be a place of great interest, suggesting connections between literature, the experimentation of visual art and the exhibition on Missoni, in particular. The programme will include events for a broader audience (such as the one with Daria Bignardi, the writer and television presenter, and the presence of Franco Buffoni), and more specialised events, such as the poetry reading, by the actress Federica Fracassi, of the work of Cecilia Resio.