There is great anticipation in the city for the project organized and coordinated by the Museo Novecento Louise Bourgeois in Florence, which will open to the public from 22 June to 20 October 2024. Two exceptional exhibitions – Do Not Abandon me and Cell XVIII (Portrait) – which will engage the Museo Novecento and the Museo degli Innocenti, consolidating the collaboration started in recent years between the two institutions. A project that brings the works of Louise Bourgeois (Paris, 1911 - New York, 2010) to Florence for the first time, building a significant relationship of osmosis between her creations and the exhibition context. A figure that is always recurring in the exhibitions of the Museo Novecento which since 2018 has played a fundamental role in the diffusion of modern and contemporary artistic languages in the city, in close collaboration with the major Florentine museum institutions.

For the occasion, the collaboration with the Istituto degli Innocenti will be proposed again: founded in 1419 as a hospital with the precise aim of welcoming children without family care in an environment characterized by high artistic and architectural value. Since then, the Institute has never interrupted its original mission, often anticipating innovations for the care of the little ones. In the complex designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, the Museum will host Cell XVIII (Portrait), a work of strong visual impact in powerful resonance with the history and collection of the Innocents, chosen by Philip Larratt- Smith in dialogue with Arabella Natalini, director of the Museum degli Innocenti, and Stefania Rispoli, curator of the Museo Novecento.