The Museo della Grafica [Museum of Graphic Art], situated since 2007 in Palazzo Lanfranchi and promoted by the City Council and the University of Pisa, conserves one of the most important Italian collections of graphic works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it houses the University of Pisa’s Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, a collection of drawings and prints set up in 1957 at the request of Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti who, in renewing his strong criticism of modernity, saw graphic art as a challenging field of expression for artists and of training for the students of the university.

The first donation, precisely in 1957, was that of the Fondo Sebastiano Timpanaro, composed of 1,000 folios by leading twentieth-century artists, including two nuclei of engravings by Giorgio Morandi and Luigi Bartolini.
The collection was then expanded with the addition of the works sent by artists following a campaign for donations, promoted by Ragghianti in 1958 (and which also brought the corpus of works by the Futurist architect Mario Chiattone), and the Fondo Argan, donated by the heirs of the critic, and consisting of 600 sheets illustrating the network of relations he wove with artists of his day. The museum is also a vibrant exhibition centre that hosts mainly monograph shows but also, periodically, events focusing more in depth on items in the collection.

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Palazzo Blu, so called for the colour of its façade as it reappeared after restoration, is a cultural centre promoted by the Fondazione Pisa and managed, since 2011, by the Fondazione Palazzo Blu.

The second floor displays a rich collection centred on Pisan art from the Middle Ages to the present day, which the Foundation acquired from the Cassa di Risparmio di Pisa.
The collection has works by twentieth-century artists, Pisan by birth or adoption, which are often shown to the public in small, temporary exhibitions in the three last rooms of the gallery itinerary. Artists include Fortunato Bellonzi, Spartaco Carlini, Ferruccio Pizzanelli, Salvatore Pizzarello, Mino Rosi, Federigo Severini, Umberto Vittorini, and Alessandro Volpi.

In the graphic section is an outstanding core of engravings by Giuseppe Viviani. The scheduled exhibitions also feature the twentieth century, with names of international fame, such as Chagall, Miró, Modigliani, Picasso and Warhol.

Starting from 1919, the painter Giorgio Kienerk (1869–1948) would spend his summers at Fauglia, drawing inspiration for his works from the surrounding countryside.

The exhibition centring on the artist takes this routine of his as a starting point. Located in the old prison of the Palazzo Comunale, the museum was set up thanks to his daughter Vittoria’s donation, already partially present in the museum on temporary loan (and a possible future bequest). Up to now, the collection has consisted of 130 items that bear witness to Kienerk’s multitude of interests — painting, sculpture, graphic art, illustrations and applied art — as well as to the various stages of his career, veering between Intimist and Symbolist themes, the post-Macchiaioli style and a pronounced pointillism.

The Civic Museum at Montopoli, inaugurated in 2004, features five diverse sections aimed at documenting the history of the area. Besides archaeological, architectural and palaeontological finds, the first floor has a picture gallery with works by local artists who worked between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

These are mainly post-Macchiaioli painters like Silvio Bicchi (1874–1948), noted for popular scenes done in tempera and pastels, a globe-trotting artist who lived in Montopoli from 1923 to 1936, and who promoted — among other things — the transformation of Milani ceramics into terracotta works of art, as illustrated in another section of the museum. Also on display are paintings by Menotti Pertici, Bicchi’s pupil, and by Mario Borgiotti (painter, collector and dealer in Macchiaioli paintings), as well as engravings by Paolo Ciampini.

This is a private collection gathered during a lifetime by Carlo Pepi, a dedicated collector who expanded his initial interest from the Macchiaioli to twentieth-century and contemporary artists.

A consistent number of these works is displayed in the villa he owned in the vicinity of Crespina (visitable by appointment), others are located in the municipal picture gallery of Follonica. As far as regards the twentieth century, the collection conserves nuclei of signed “monographs” by artists like Lorenzo Viani, Giovanni March, Mino Trafeli, and Giuseppe Viviani, and more generally traces the development of Tuscan art from Modigliani to classic Abstractionism and the Attoma Group.
The Carlo Pepi collection is managed in collaboration with public and private institutions and promotes its own collections by means of catalogues and exhibitions.

The museum, located in the thirteenth-century Torre Minucci, celebrates the history of alabaster through a series of finds and examples ranging from the Etruscan period to the present day, with explanations on technical aspects and materials, on the evolution of styles and, finally, on the effect such productions had on society and the territory.

The room focusing on the twentieth-century documents the booming production of the early 1900s, the decline after 1929 and the revival of interest in the post-war period, with a steady development lasting until the 1970s that led to an improvement in the quality of the artefacts. The protagonists of these innovations include Umberto Borgna, considered to be the first alabaster designer, and later the architect Angelo Mangiarotti.

More recent contributions are to be found from Ugo La Pietra, Carla Venosta, Elio di Franco, Prospero Rasulo, Raffaello Consortini and Mino Trafeli.

Outside the city walls, opposite the church of San Giusto e Clemente, is a museum centring on the artist Raffaello Consortini of Volterra.

Located on the ground floor of the small building in which the sculptor lived, it displays sculptures in bronze, terracotta, wood and stone, but also some archaeological items that were part of his collection. The parish of San Giusto, which looks after Raffaello Consortini’s bequest and the museum, promotes the artist through a Sculpture Prize dedicated to him for the students of the high schools for Artistic Studies and the Tuscan Academies of Fine Art.

The Museum of Palazzo Pretorio at Peccioli conserves a collection of contemporary graphic works donated to the city in 2006 by Vito Merlini, a medical doctor by profession as well as a philanthropist and art enthusiast.
Consisting of over 200 pieces — mostly from the twentieth century — it focuses on graphic art in its triple definition of etching, drawing and engraving, favoured precisely for its capacity to maintain unaltered the immediacy and the freshness of the creative gesture. It includes artists specializing in the sector (Bartolini, Parigi, Vivani, Zancanaro) as well as painters and sculptors who are only occasional engravers, such as Accardi, Baj, Carrà, Guttuso, and Morlotti.

Besides hosting events and exhibitions, the collection has been itself the centre of exhibitions abroad — in the Estorick Collection in London in 2008 and in the Manege Museum in St Petersburg in 2009.

The museum is located inside the Piaggio di Pontedera workshops, where it occupies one of the oldest warehouses, the former Attrezzeria (tooling plant).

It was founded in 2000 with the aim of preserving the company’s history and displaying the creative excellence and technology that this has represented for over a century. The museum houses the Piaggio, Vespa and Gilera collections with over one hundred models on display (vehicles, motors and mechanical parts), including exemplars from very limited series, special productions or unique pieces, such as the Vespa autographed by Salvador Dalí.

The history of the Vespa is the hub that the exhibition revolves around: from the first postwar models (when Enrico Piaggio entrusted Corradino D’Ascanio with the task of planning a vehicle suited to the requirements of the moment — something simple, robust, inexpensive yet elegant) to the Vespa 125 Primavera of 1967 and the Vespa 50 Special of 1973 (a true icon of the youth revolution); and then from the Vespa PX of 1978 to the compelling reinterpretation of the legend in the models of recent decades. The historical archive is also of considerable importance, being among the richest corporate archives in the world.
Together with the museum, it is under the wing of the Piaggio Foundation established in 1994, which also arranges temporary exhibitions and events.

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Here is a nucleus of 200 works by Italo Griselli (1800-1958), donated to the Pisa State Museum by the artist’s wife and augmented from deposits in the Accademia pisana dell’Ussaro.

In addition to the rich collection of plaster casts, there are scale models, studies, works in bronze, ceramics, marble, and some 75 paintings and drawings documenting the wide production by the sculptor, a native of Montescudaio, but Florentine by adoption.
Noted for his public commissions, Griselli was sensible to Futurism, although his art chiefly exemplifies an elegant twentieth-century Classicism. The works are displayed in the last four rooms of the museum (Rooms 17-21) according to an arrangement suggestive of the artist’s atelier, not based on chronological order, but engaging with specific themes — first and foremost his portraiture.