'Women in Balance - 1955-65' Exhibition Takes Over the Ferragamo Museum
The Salvatore Ferragamo Museum's new exhibition recounts Wanda Miletti Ferragamo's successes in both her private and professional life.
A new exhibition comes to life in the elegant spaces of Palazzo Spini Feroni in Florence, dedicated to the life and work of Wanda Miletti Ferragamo, the intelligent and solid guide of the Maison Salvatore Ferragamo, after the death of her husband in 1960. Women in Balance - 1955-65, which has just been inaugurated at the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum and is open to visitors until May 2023, explains how Wanda's life changed following this dramatic event when, in addition to the commitment to her family, she decided to take on the job.
A story that, developed in the spaces of a hypothetical house, highlights how Ferragamo's role as an entrepreneur never tarnished the more feminine and traditional side of her personality, as a woman full of values, dedicated to the home and her children. Married young, she had three girls and three boys, all of whom then joined the company. An opportunity also to cite, as Ferragamo was never one to be in the spotlight, the story also focuses on many other pioneering women in entrepreneurship, culture, and science who, between the end of the '50s and the early '60s, managed to unite the affirmation of their personality with family affections.
The premise of the exhibition Women in Balance - 1955-65, curated by Stefania Ricci and Elvira Valleri, starts from the assumption that history is declined in a plural, creative, and productive dimension, and that the actions of individuals who create models of life, consumption, gender relations, and work lead to profound cultural and social transformations, as happened in post-war Italy, also thanks to many enterprising women.
It was a period of changing styles of behavior (and clothing), which prepares for a new aesthetic and a search by women to be suitable for new roles: always in order and in shape, a lifestyle influenced by advertising and new models of life, just as the House—which is central to the exhibition—transforms and begins to reflect new forms of sociality. It's a place that, for Ferragamo, represents a refuge, where one can return from work in the evening and reflect. After all, reflection is the aim of the exhibition, which not only wants to tell a chapter of the Italian history, but also to trigger contemporary reflection on the topics covered.
