A fashion designer, Italian singer and Icelandic illustrator team up on Vatican exhibition

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican’s Apostolic Library tapped Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri, Italian singer Jovanotti and Icelandic illustrator Kristjana S Williams for an exhibition exploring world tours of the late 19th Century.

The exhibition, titled “En Route,” is the sixth in a series of events intended as a dialogue between the Vatican library’s heritage, dating to the 4th century, and contemporary art.

The library enlisted Chiuri, Jovanotti and Williams to explore the stories of selected travelers, and the contemporary meaning of a recently discovered collection of 1,200 newspapers gathered from remote corners of the world by the diplomat and scholar Cesare Poma during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Chiuri focused on six Victorian-era women who defied conventions by traveling the world on their own. She worked with the Chanakya School of Craft in India to create tapestries depicting the routes they traveled.

“It was interesting to see that they immediately felt the need to change their clothes, because otherwise it was not comfortable to travel, especially by bicycle,” Chiuri told a press preview on Friday. “The first item they took off was the corset.”

Art installations are displayed during the preview of the exhibition “En Route” organized by the Vatican Apostolic Library exploring world tours of the late 19th century at the Vatican, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Jovanotti, a singer-songwriter and globetrotter, exhibits a bicycle that he has ridden around the world, including on trips through China, Iran, Pakistan, New Zealand and most of Latin America. He also displays a disco ball that is made into a globe with silver mirrored panels representing the ocean, and gold ones for land.

“I liked the idea of bringing a disco ball to the Vatican,’’ he quipped.

The exhibition takes its name from a periodical by two French journalists, Lucien Leroy and Henri Papillaud, who published their global travels from 1895-97, in part to finance the journey. It runs from Feb. 15-Dec. 20.