Futurism at Yale

Abstract

F.T. Marinetti would have been surprised and, one would like to think, pleased with the various celebrations of Futurism that Yale University mounted this spring. These were occasioned by the recent arrival at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the important Marinetti Archive, from which Marjorie G. Wynne, the Research Librarian, and Luce Marinetti-Barbi, Advisor to the Archive, presented some of the outstanding items in a handsome display (F.T. Marinetti and Futurism, February 15–May 10, 1983). In addition, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Center for British Art, the Whitney Humanities Center, and the Schools of Music and Architecture collaborated on a series of events during the month of April, which, with greater or lesser success, called attention to the enduring vitality of the Futurist message. But the chief credit for the orchestration of these complex activities goes to Anne Coffin Hanson, John Hay Whitney Professor of Art History, and to Luce Marinetti-Barbi, who envisaged, insp...