"The strength of the ruins is not the usual exhibition of painting bucolic landscapes with classical architecture, although a section is dedicated to them, the subject is rather treated with a strong propensity to interdisciplinary, to the mixture of themes and reflections. The central idea of the exhibition, the bane in fact, is investigated from different angles, interpreted through the eyes of the ancients, from the West to the Far East, and by the most different: by the learned of the '500, tourists contemporary, through intellectuals, filmmakers, poets, sociologists and musicians.
The route is a meditation on the incompleteness, on the need to conserve memory, the inability of contemporary man to live with the past and the progress of modernity, but it is also testimony to a fascination with ancient ruins remaining unchanged over the centuries. The same Museum of Palazzo Altemps and its permanent collection are an integral part of this reflection, the journey through the remains of the past and the ruins of the present. The magnificent rooms of the museum, including the recently restored, will host more than a hundred works of style, techniques, histories and character far different from the works of art in the museum regularly, often creating a play back. So the hall of Polyphemus the splendid torso gargantuan introduces the theme of the fragment and the image of the male body in its evolution. The ambition of the exhibition is to create a virtuous combination between the museum building and the exhibits temporarily, in a dialogue where each supports and enhances the other. In this way, the museum becomes an integral part of the artistic language of the show.
With 120 works from public and private collections, Italian and foreign, it rebuilds a wide-ranging speech on the ruins : sentinels of the past, places of memory, traces of war, remembrance of natural disasters, signs of damage caused by the environment. All this becomes a warning, but also a source of creative energy for the future. The exhibition runs through all the rooms of the Museo Nazionale Romano in Palazzo Altemps, incorporating the works of the permanent collection, which contribute to the richness of the narrative. "