in 2020, and in March of 2021 every single painting was returned to the house,” Kristin says. Moving forward, the Caetani’s Centre goal is to continue fostering that sense of excitement and interest in their programming. For Halloween of 2022, for instance, they hosted their second annual ghost tour, this time with actors playing the Caetani family. “This place is supposedly haunted,” Kristin says. “So we thought ‘let’s do something fun with that,’ and we had these haunted tours guided by members of the family. That was a big draw. Every single tour was sold out.” Also moving forward, the Caetani Cultural Centre Society has plans for further restoration and rejuvenation. The home is over 125 years old, and “there are obviously things that need to be refreshed,” Kristin explains. “We’d love to restore it back to its original glory,” she says, “not only on the inside of the structure, but the outside as well. We have an initiative called ‘Friends of the Garden’ that’s all about restoring the property. We’ve had a lot of droughts and fire that killed off a lot of the grass and foliage and we want to bring all that back. We want to make the property healthy again.” “It’s a beautiful property and we want to show it off,” she continues. “Over the years, some of the outbuildings, now used as art studios, have been restored and a courtyard and beautiful stone pond have also been installed – but there’s still a lot of work to be done.” As part of that work, the Caetani Cultural Centre Society wants to add more space for displays. Right now, for instance, the Recapitulation series is displayed in an 800 square foot gallery that used to be a carport. Some of the paintings in that series are very large, and the gallery is not big enough to exhibit them all at once, so they have to cycle through them. “We want to build a better and more expansive home for that series,” Kristin says. “It’s a shame that right now we can’t show more of the paintings at once. We want to remedy that, so we’re doing a fundraiser called ‘Bringing Sveva Home.’ The goal of that fundraiser is to build a more practical gallery space on the property so we can show more paintings, so we can protect and preserve them for future generations. It is a significant body of work that really needs to be seen.” “Sveva should have been better known in her life, but she wasn’t,” Kristin concludes. “Our mission and mandate is to preserve her life story and her work. That’s what we’re focused on, and we welcome anyone who wants to help.” MARCH 2023
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