[Catholic Caucus] First Woman to Lead the Vatican’s Arts Academy Wants the Church to Embrace Contemporary Art

National Catholic Register ^ | January 17, 2026 | Hannah Brockhaus

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[Catholic Caucus] First Woman to Lead the Vatican’s Arts Academy Wants the Church to Embrace Contemporary Art

Contemporary art is powerful vehicle for communicating values, challenging reality, and understanding the times we live in, says Cristiana Perrella.

An expert in contemporary art, Cristiana Perrella was inducted into the Vatican’s 500-year-old fine arts academy in a narrow Baroque chapel under the attic of the Pantheon in 2022. Three years later, Pope Leo XIV appointed her the first woman president in the academy’s history.

In three decades as an independent curator and director of art museums, Perella has had little experience with Church institutions and is not herself a practicing Catholic. Her appointment exemplifies the opportunities and challenges in the Vatican’s engagement with secular culture.

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TOPICS: Catholic; Current Events; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: secularchurch; sinnodalchurch

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Perrella acknowledges that some in the Church would prefer to stick to traditional artistic themes and forms. But she insists that “the experiment, the vision, is now to move outside [historic] boundaries.”

The Conciliazione 5 gallery has showcased, l to r, Brazilian Vivien Suter’s abstract paintings and Adrian Paci’s sculpture of a man carrying a roof on his shoulders.

[DesertRhino]

They ruin every organization the they are placed in charge of.

[cgbg]

Just when the church seems like it can no longer reach new lows—it keeps digging deeper and deeper into perversity and insanity.

[cgbg]

Perhaps Tony Podesta can donate his art collection.

Lol.

[cnsmom]

Picasso’s Guernica teaches so much abstract art is the past and future.

[ebb tide]

Ping

Objections to Perrella’s new role also cited posts shared on her personal Instagram page, such as a photo of a rainbow-colored rug in Rome’s Termini train station, and another in support of a bill seeking to penalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, which was opposed by Italian Catholic bishops and the Vatican. Perrella described the complaints as “strange.”

“In fact, the cardinal [Mendonça] told me not to worry” about it, she said.

[Ge0ffrey]

Maybe George Bush and Hunter Biden can add a painting or two.

[NorthMountain]

challenging reality is not a good idea ...

[Petrosius]

Most of what is contemporary is not art.

[HYPOCRACY]

The vatican is all faggotry all the time. So sick of these heretics destroying the church.

[iamgalt]

The first woman and look at the crap she wants to elevate. Pattern recognition again.

[Fedora]

Cristiana Perrella sounds like the ecclesiastical art equivalent of Kathleen Kennedy.

[ClarityGuy]

It was Mister Prevost who appointed her, and of course personnel is policy.