To mark the celebration of the 2025 Jubilee, the Vatican Library is presenting a major exhibition that continues and, at the same time, renews the appointment with which, since 2021, it has been engaging in dialogue with important contemporary artists, with whom it discusses its historical heritage.
The chosen theme is that of “trips around the world”, which, following the literary journey imagined by Jules Verne, based entirely on books rather than first-hand experience, began to multiply during the closing decades of the 19th century, inspired also by the countless possibilities offered by new forms of transport, such as steamships, bicycles, steam trains and hot-air balloons. It is from one of these journeys that the exhibition takes its name: EN ROUTE.
Curated by Don Giacomo Cardinali, Simona De Crescenzo, Francesca Giannetto and Delio V. Proverbio, the exhibition will be held in the exhibition rooms of the Vatican Library from 15 February to 20 December 2025. Roughly fifty works from the Library's collections of manuscripts, printed books and numismatic items will be on display, together with site-specific installations by three creative artists: Lorenzo Jovanotti Cherubini, singer-songwriter and musician, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Artistic Director of Dior’s women’s collections, and British illustrator Kristjana S Williams. Lorenzo Cherubini has been invited to talk about his travels and introduce visitors to the theme of trips around the world. The section elaborated by Kristjana Williams aims to present the audience with the biographies and works of the consul Cesare Poma, Italian diplomat, linguist and passionate collector of literary testimonies, on one hand, and those of journalists and globe-trotters Lucien Leroy and Henri Papillaud, founders and editors of “En route” magazine, on the other. The itinerary, conceived by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Karishma Swali and produced by the Chanakya School of Craft, will be complemented by the celebration of six women who set off on their own journey around the world in the closing decades of the 19th century, breaking one of the most tenacious taboos of patriarchal culture.
Intesa Sanpaolo joins the Vatican Library in the role of Partner and contributes to the exhibition project with the loan of the textile work “Mappa” (1984) by artist Alighiero Boetti (Turin 1940 - Rome 1994), which is part of the Intesa Sanpaolo collections and was previously exhibited at the Gallerie d'Italia in Naples. The work admirably intersects not only the artistic path but also those the narrative and scientific paths imagined by the curators.