Welcoming you back!

Dear Patrons and Friends,

As you know the Vatican Museums reopened to visitors on May 3. This re-opening came after the third closure since the outbreak of the pandemic in Italy in early 2020. With people not able to travel and visit venues and the impact of the loss of a significant volume of international tourism, our team has been working on exciting ways to bring the collections to you – at home, and to show you how much your contribution has meant for the Vatican Museums in the last year.

Through new opportunities to develop online content, learning opportunities, and digital access we have been able to feel closer to you but nothing can really replace meeting you in person and showing you the works of art whose restoration you so generously funded.

That’s why we are incredibly happy to share with you the images of the first Patrons coming back to our Museums.

We are looking forward to more of these visits!

A special visit from Texas

Joe and Chris Popolo with their children in front of the Map of Parma,
a project they sponsored in 2016.

Celestial Globe by W.J. Blaeu
Adopted By: The New England Chapter

Willem Janszoon Blaeu was a famous cartographer and manufacturer of Dutch mathematical and astronomical instruments. He learned the fundamentals of cosmography, geography, and the construction and use of astronomical instruments as a pupil of the famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe.
Globes were useful scientific instruments and at the same time works of valuable artistic quality. They were generally arranged in pairs (terrestrial and celestial) to ornament the libraries of monks, scholars, princes and sovereigns. The globe in question, signed and dated, is a pendant with a terrestrial globe coming from the Chigi collection.

Adopted by the New England Chapter, here represented by its membership chair Andrea Gabrielle, it was finally brought back to the Museums where visitors will be able to admire it.

Illinois Chapter

For each chapter we create a customized tour of the Museums and its restoration laboratories. Patrons need to look closely to the projects they adopted and get to know the restorers that are working on the projects.

Here below Julia Van Domelen, Mr. Joseph Sanda and Jim and Carol Thorton visit the Tapestry Laboratory and the Apollo del Belvedere.

The Apollo del Belvedere is a notable piece of art from within the Vatican Museums collection that has been at risk. The Patrons of the Arts just received grant funding from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project for the restoration of this incredible marble statue.
Before the Bank of America grant, in late 2020, our Illinois and New York Chapters funded the preliminary studies of the Apollo del Belvedere. These studies allowed the expert restorers to carry out a careful analysis, which will benefit their future restoration work.