Goppion’s putting another masterpiece “in the window”

“General rehearsal for Milan’s Museo del Novecento (Museum of the Twentieth Century), the new exhibition centre that is going to be inaugurated on December 6th next. Goppion, the company that has been putting the masterpieces of world art “under glass”, will be directing operations. And, as a matter of fact, yesterday Goppion installed the glass case for Pellizza da Volpedo’s Quarto Stato. It had just struck midday when manoeuvres to hoist the gigantic glass case began in Piazza Diaz. A glass sheet of 6 metres by 3, weighing more than 600 kilos, swayed a bit in mid-air attracting the glances of curious passers-by. ‘Given the record-breaking dimensions’, Angelo Frugoni from Goppion’s technical office explained, ‘we had to get the glass through the first-floor windows’, lifting it therefore to a height of about 10 metres. The hard work didn’t finish there, though. The glass case travelled to the room reserved for it by passing over a passageway into the stairwell at a height of 20 metres: real Goppion-style mission impossible. ‘And this, too, was an avant-garde project’, commented Frugoni. The glass case is sliding and will enable technicians and curators to be always able to get to the work of art’. The work’s arrival is planned for Thursday: the Quarto Stato will follow the same airborne route as the glass sheet, with the promise of further acrobatics”.