At Play: Art and Play from the Risorgimento to Today

Edited by Ermanno Tedeschi

Playing has never been simply a pastime or a recreational activity. Throughout the centuries covered by the exhibition—from the Risorgimento to contemporary Italy—toys have fulfilled functions that history has often overlooked: they have taught obedience and rebellion, conveyed patriotic values, and offered consolation.

IN PLAY. Art and Play from the Risorgimento to Today aims to bring this complexity to the public through a journey that brings together historic and rare toys, 19th-century dolls, artifacts from criminal anthropology, animated books, puppets, photographs, and works by contemporary artists. This complexity was intuited by historian Johan Huizinga in the 1930s, when in Homo Ludens he argued that culture is born not from reason or work, but from play, and that when it forgets this, it becomes rigid and hollow.

The Turin exhibition project was born as part of Giocare a Regola d’Arte, a traveling exhibition that has already visited Palermo, the MANN in Naples, the MOMUC in Mondovì, Tokyo, and Be’er Sheva. In Turin, it takes on a new and more intense form: its location in the spaces of the National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento allows for a new dialogue between historical heritage and contemporary life, revealing how actively games have participated in the construction of Italy’s national identity.

The event poster is available.