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From Sunday, June 28, through Thursday, July 2, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents a workshop for children aged 9–12, led by artist Francesca Grilli and poet Azzurra D’Agostino.
The children joining the workshop will partake in an engaging experience that includes games, reading, creative writing, and physical activities and choreographies, in which they will learn how to “read the palms” of adults—a gesture that represents rupture and hope and subverts the power dynamics between child and adult. At the end of the workshop, the children will perform in Sparks, a show by artist Francesca Grilli, presented at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on July 2.
The workshop is organized on the occasion of the exhibition Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector, which explores Peggy Guggenheim’s years in London between 1938 and 1939. During this period, she organized an exhibition of drawings and paintings by children at her gallery Guggenheim Jeune, recognizing in their works a freedom of expression, creativity, and significance that could resonate with adult audiences.
useful information
- The workshop takes place at the Peggy Guggenheim during the following days:
- June 28, from 2–5 pm
- June 29 and 30, and July 1 and 2, form 10 am–5 pm
- Participation in the workshop is free. To apply you must submit a letter of introduction for the child by June 7. Places are limited.
FRANCESCA GRILLI
Francesca Grilli develops a multidisciplinary practice that includes performance, installation, and video, in both theater and music, directly involving the viewer. Her work brings together politics and poetics, questioning power structures, social norms, and mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. Invisibility often becomes a form of resistance, challenging the logic that rewards immediate visibility and productivity. Grilli questions dominant narratives, creating space for intergenerational dialogue and encouraging people to rethink norms and notions of identity and hierarchy. Her practice gives precedence to incarnate bodies, opening opportunities to reformulate existing systems and promoting collective reflection.
Memory and its transformations are at the heart of her investigation, explored through intangible elements like sound, air, and fire. Voices render personal and collective stories visible, air generates shared spaces, and fire manifests ephemeral energy and renewal. Grilli’s work has been presented in major institutions including the MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome; Kaaitheater and Bozar Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; The National Museum of Oslo; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and the Italian pavilion of the 55th Venice Art Biennale.
AZZURRA D’AGOSTINO
Azzurra D’Agostino was born and lives in a small town in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. She has published various collections of poems (for which she was awarded the Premio Carducci and the Premio Ciampi Valigie Rosse, and was a finalist for the Premio Viareggio-Repaci), and writes for the theater both for adults (Daria Defloran; Teatro dei Venti, Modena, with whom she won the Premio Speciale UBU 2025; Marco D’Agostin; and others) and for children (Teatro dell’Argine, Bologna, and others). She collaborates on the performance Sparks by artist Francesca Grilli, with whom she has embarked on a creative dialogic journey encompassing several projects, such as Record and La Piena/The Flood. She has published children’s books and novels for young adults (for publishers including Giunti, DeA, Fatatrac, and Il Castoro), a translation of a radio drama on Hölderlin (Mimesis), books with dreamlike and folkloric themes, along with a deck of oracle cards based on palmistry (Whitestar Vivida). In addition to writing, she leads poetry workshops for people of all ages and serves as president of the Associazione SassiScritti in Porretta Terme, Bologna, with which she was a finalist for the Premio Ubu for best organizational project in 2016 and for the Premio Rete Critica in 2018.