Monica Preti
Monica Preti graduated from Florence University with a degree in Art History, continuing her studies at the Courtauld Institute in London, the Longhi Foundation and the European University Institute in Florence, where she received a PhD in History and Civilization in 2001.
In 1989-1990 she was conservator of the library and head of educational activities at the Società per le Belle Arti ed Esposizione Permanente in Milan. Later, in Paris, she was a researcher at Inha/Institut national d’histoire de l’art (2001-2005), a lecturer in History of Collecting and Museums at Inp/Institut national du Patrimoine (2001-2004) and in History of Art and Museography at École du Louvre (2000-2006). From 2006 to 2021 she was head of cultural programming at the Auditorium of the Musée du Louvre. Since 2021 she has been director of Pistoia Musei, and in 2023, after the creation of the new Fondazione Pistoia Musei, she took over as its general director.
She has worked on the history of collecting, the birth of the idea of heritage, and exchanges between different artistic fields from a cultural history perspective.
Among others, she was a fellow at the Villa Medici-Académie de France (2014); chercheur associé at CNRS/Centre André Chastel and École pratique des hautes études (2018); Visiting scholar at the Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (2019). Among his numerous publications: Wounded cities. The Representation of Urban Disasters in European Ferdinando Marescalchi (1754-1816): an Italian Collector in Napoleonic Paris (Minerva 2005); Art, 14th-20th Centuries (Brill 2015); From Jerusalem to Peking, from Rome to Vienna. On the “Essay on Historical Architecture” by J.B. Fischer Von Erlach (Panini 2019); Maisons-Musées. La patrimonialisation des demeures des illustres (“Cultures & Musées” 2019); Ariosto and the Arabs (Harvard University Press 2021). An expert in museography, she regularly participates in conferences, seminars and lectures on the topics of cultural policies and museum management
