Launched in December 2020, from its very first stages Pompeii Commitment set out to gather and rethink a complex legacy: that of a history which, for almost three centuries, has made Pompeii a crossroads of experimentation and research for generations of artists and scholars from around the world. Over five years of activity, Pompeii Commitment has thus developed a program articulated through a dense network of initiatives, commissions, and acquisitions, building a critical and experimental ecosystem increasingly capable of engaging the languages and urgencies of contemporary art.

With the beginning of 2026, the project seeks to further strengthen its outward-looking orientation. This involves reinforcing its public and relational vocation, fostering direct engagement with the complex natural and social ecosystems of the surrounding territories, while also expanding as broadly as possible the scope of its institutional collaborations, both in Italy and internationally. Bringing Pompeii beyond Pompeii: contributing to the expansion of its episteme, well beyond the walls of the ancient city.

The start of the new year marks the conclusion of Pompeii Threnody, the solo exhibition by Cerith Wyn Evans inaugurated in July 2025 at the Antiquarium of Boscoreale. Several of the artist’s works – the large neon In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni, together with the series of nine photo-engravings dedicated to the fossilized cypresses from the Sarno plain – will nonetheless enter the Park’s contemporary art collection and remain on display in the spaces of the Antiquarium, in dialogue with the archaeological materials exhibited in the galleries. Among these, naturally, is the large ceremonial chariot from the excavations at Civita Giuliana, which represented a crucial point of departure for Wyn Evans’s work in Pompeii.

Over the course of the year, Otobong Nkanga will continue the research initiated with her project Imagine Being a Particle, working towards the production of an artwork destined to enter Pompeii’s collections. In the coming months, Pompeii Commitment’s online platforms will also publish the fellowship by Meriem Bennani, which will conclude the multi-year program of the Digital Fellowships. At the same time, some works already part of the Park’s contemporary art collection will continue to circulate beyond Pompeii. Hermes (2021), one of the sculptures realized by Simone Fattal within the framework of Pompeii Commitment, is currently on loan to the Museo Madre in Naples, where it will be on view until spring in the gallery dedicated to the artist as part of the exhibition Gli anni. Chapter 2, curated by Eva Fabbris.

At the core of Pompeii Commitment’s 2026 program will be the production of the film project I diseredati / The Dispossessed by American artist Amie Siegel. Promoted by the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, the project was selected as a winner of the PAC 2025 call (Piano Arte Contemporanea) issued by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The work aims to explore processes of excavation, study, storage, and warehousing within the Park, reconstructing the “second life” of archaeological artifacts– works of art and everyday objects alike – through an operation of “reverse archaeology”. This approach seeks to return these materials to their original contexts of discovery, based on in-depth archival research into excavation journals.

Pompeii Commitment also continues to function as a platform for exchange, study and research. In preparation for this year’s activities, dialogues and moments of exchange have been initiated with Italian and international artists such as Barbara Crawford, Catrin Huber, and Marzia Migliora, as well as with professors Paolo Carpi and Andrea Tartaglia and students from the Master’s program in Architecture at the Politecnico in Milan, within the framework of the research and design project Live at Pompeii. These conversations and investigations aim to interrogate spaces, architectures, and the deeper meanings of Pompeii, laying the groundwork for possible future developments, with particular attention to the notion of «boundary» and «survival», as well as to the complex relationship between the ancient and contemporary city.

Launched during the most dramatic months of a global health crisis, Pompeii Commitment was confronted from its very beginnings with complex historical and cultural contexts: a time marked by the radical questioning of systems of values, political relationships, and forms of life, but also by the urgent emergence of the need to imagine new forms of thought and responsibility, capable of opening, even within the space of tragedy, possible horizons of regeneration.

Today, in an international context marked by unrest and deep tensions that shape the present and call the future into question, Pompeii continues to embody something far removed from any symbol of finality. Destroyed – and at the same time preserved – beneath tons of ash and lapilli, it stands as a paradigm of transformation and survival: of materials, histories, and memories inevitably subject to recurring cycles of destruction and rebirth. A complex cultural and natural ecosystem in constant evolution, sustained by an ongoing activity of excavation, conservation, and research.

As ever, these are uncertain times. Yet it is precisely within this condition of instability that the deepest meaning of our project is renewed: not to offer definitive or univocal answers, but to open spaces of research capable of interrogating reality through the living matter of thought and history, generating perspectives, questions, and lines of inquiry. In this sense, Pompeii Commitment continues to take shape as an open and shared site of work: for those who operate daily within Pompeii, and for those who, from other places and perspectives, recognise it as an active field of resonances and transformations.