Carta Bianca, or Carte Blanche, Capodimonte Imaginaire (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte 12 December 2017 –17 June 2018) is an invitation the museum has extended to ten leading international figures from a range of fields and cultural backgrounds to curate their own “ideal” room at Capodimonte. The challenge gives them carte blanche to choose freely around ten works from the 47,000 in the museum’s collection, with the sole condition that they explain their choices. The exhibition, a concept by Sylvain Bellenger, director of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, and Andrea Viliani, director of the Madre di Napoli museum, asks the guest curators to express an alternative way of perceiving art. Carta Bianca is an invitation to visitors to reconsider the very concept of museum; rather than André Malraux’s musée imaginaire, or museum without walls, Carta Bianca is everyone’s personal museum.

The following international figures have accepted the Capodimonte museum challenge:

Laura Bossi Régnier, neurologist and science historian
Giuliana Bruno, professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University
Gianfranco D’Amato, business magnate and collector
Marc Fumaroli, historian and essayist, member of the Académie française
Riccardo Muti, conductor
Mariella Pandolfi, professor of Anthropology, Université de Montréal
Giulio Paolini, artist
Paolo Pejrone, architect and landscape gardener
Vittorio Sgarbi, writer, art professor, critic and collector
Francesco Vezzoli, artist

The curators explain their choices in video interviews which can be accessed on visitors own devices using the Carta Bianca app created by Arm 23, a digital dimension to the exhibition with contents that can also be saved and viewed later.