Costa said its sponsorship reflects the company’s artistic vocation and values and its desire to contribute to the city’s most important cultural initiatives. The company noted that for 65 years its ships have featured art and culture onboard. The Munch exhibition will also be promoted on the ships that call at Savona in this period, as well as being included in the shore excursions offered in Genoa.

The artistic project for the new Costa Diadema, under construction at Marghera and due for delivery in October 2014, is being overseen by the firm casagrande&recalcati and explores the theme of royalty.

Participating artists have been asked to provide their own individual interpretations of the subject – from the symbolic to the abstract, from the specific to the universal – establishing a unique continuum between the works created and the interior spaces on the ship where they will be housed and which they will enhance, according to Costa.

Each Costa ship has a permanent art collection contemporary to the period of that particular ship’s construction, and in some cases the shipboard exhibits also include collections of antiques.

Since 2000 the interiors of the new Costa Cruises ships have been conceived by architect Joseph Farcus, who, Costa stated, “has pioneered an innovative design philosophy with a ground-breaking spatial concept intended to catapult the guest to a wonderful dreamlike world, where art and design become forms of language conveying sensations and experiences.”

On board the 14 ships of the Costa Cruises fleet there are a total of around 4,500 original works and 60,000 copies, seen each year by over a million passengers.