From Saturday December 7th, 2024 until January 7th, 2025 the Central National Library of Florence offers its visitors the exhibition Acquisti coattivi 2016-2024. Mostra di manoscritti, libri, carte (Forced purchases 2016-2024. Exhibition of manuscripts, books, papers), dedicated to a little-known aspect of the protection of Italian bibliographic heritage.

The compulsory purchase is an ablatory act through which the Ministry of Culture can acquire things of cultural interest, presented in the Export Office: it ensures that a resource at risk of being sold abroad instead becomes a part of the immense public bibliographic heritage. With this exhibition we therefore intend to present to the public of the Central National Library of Florence both this aspect of the protection work, which is relatively little known, and the manuscripts, books and documents that have been acquired for the Library since 2016 through this specific regulatory instrument; that is, removed from export and made available to scholars, readers and citizens. Among manuscripts, correspondence, ancient and modern books, musical manuscripts, a few dozen works are exhibited for the first time, very different from each other in age and type, from an ancient fragment with musical notation (11th century), to Renaissance manuscripts and books, to correspondence such as those between Ugo Ojetti and Benito Mussolini, to modern books, including for example a catalog containing a sketch by Juan Miró.

Promoted by: Ministry of Culture, Direzione Generale Biblioteche e Diritto d’Autore, Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze

Curatorship of the exhibition: David Speranzi, Simona Mammana

Catalogue edited by: David Speranzi; Publisher: Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze

Discover more: https://www.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/attivita/acquisti-coattivi-2016-2024-mostra-di-manoscritti-libri-carte/