Rome. It is a rare enough donation in Italy that it attracts attention. That of twelve works made by the Cy Twombly Foundation at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. On September 20, the GNAMC inaugurated a room entirely dedicated to the American artist housing eleven paintings created between 1957 and 1963 during his stay in Rome, as well as a pastel on paperr Standing nude by Pablo Picasso from 1906.
The value of the donation, announced in June 2025, is estimated at more than 40 million euros. A triple donation since it does not only include works of art. The Cy Twombly Foundation will finance approximately 1 million euros for the complete renovation of the GNAM restoration laboratory, including a doubling of its surface area and reserves which will benefit from the latest technological equipment. This initiative will allow the museum to be at the forefront of the conservation of contemporary works of art on paper, an area in which Cy Twombly has distinguished himself. 1.3 million euros will finally be allocated to the creation of a postgraduate study and scholarship program, focused on the conservation of works on paper. The GNAM thus consolidates its reputation as a center for research and training on an international scale.
This triple donation seals the special bond that unites Cy Twombly and Rome, which thus becomes the main Italian center for knowledge and promotion of his work. He lived there for a large part of his life and died there in 2011. It was in this city that he anchored his artistic journey steeped in mythology, poetry and classical history. “Rome, its architecture, its music, its cinema and the Italian landscape have been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Twombly: this is why it seemed natural to us that these works find a place at the GNAMC”, explained Nicola Del Roscio, president of the Cy Twombly Foundation.
This gesture is presented by the Italian Ministry of Culture as a success of collaboration between the public sector and a private actor. It has both enriched the artistic collections of a museum while meeting its needs in terms of modernizing its infrastructures. Alessandro Giuli, holder of the MIC, hopes that the donation from the Cy Twombly Foundation will encourage other collectors or foundations to follow his example. To do this, they will have to overcome administrative and tax burdens. They must also confront the reluctance of museums for whom donations are more often a burden than a gift due to the lack of space to already exhibit works from the permanent collection, but also the new conservation costs that they entail. This has nevertheless not prevented a few donations in recent years: that in 2022 of 80 paintings and 300 drawings from the Meli collection to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto (MART) or even 219 works on paper and archival documents by Giuseppe Penone, a major figure of Arte povera, to the Castello di Rivoli near Turin, in 2020.
