Fabriano Paper Pavilion

The Fabriano Paper Pavilion. A wonderful journey was originally conceived as a temporary installation in the historic Miliani Paper Mill Complex, designed as a poetic journey into the world of paper and the paper mill. The site-specific project was commissioned by the Fondazione Fedrigoni Fabriano on the occasion of the XIII UNESCO Creative Cities Conference held in June 2019 in Fabriano, and has now become a permanent exhibition.

What the visitor experiences is the product of a collaborative project by a group of artists who created an impressive installation about the art of papermaking  for this event, engaging in a rich and continuous dialogue with the historical heritage associated with this place, with its watermarks and moulds, with copper and brass, and contrasting the impalpability of cotton pulp with the heaviness of bronze, in a profound and continuous relationship with the light that illuminates this wonderful exchange.

Together this group of artists developed magical interpretations of watermarks, the art of engraving, and drawing, and reinvented spaces with their movement through lights and shadows: a poetic journey, curated by Umberto Giovannini, which took shape with the help of iconographic constructions by artists Gianna Bentivenga and Maria Pina Bentivenga, the installation and shadow project by Anusc Castiglioni, and the lighting by Massimo Zanelli.

The Fabriano Paper Pavilion is a unique experience that explores the treasures preserved by the Fedrigoni Fabriano Foundation in the historic complex of the Fabriano paper mills. It is an entrancing journey that begins at the Historical Archive of the Miliani Paper Mills and proceeds, following the course of the Giano River, to the Repository of historical papemaking materials with over 10,000 tools and equipment used for the production of handmade and machine-made paper.  It is an extraordinary heritage, a unique testament to the identification of the city with the tradition of papermaking throughout the centuries.

The size and importance of the Foundation’s archival, book and paper collections – a fundamental resource for the history of Italian and international paper - make it unique in Italy; not least for the aims that its founder Fedrigoni S.p.A. offers through a significant contribution to culture, scientific and technical research, and the protection and enrichment of a heritage that is a source of intellectual, social and economic wealth and development.