Silvia Mazza
Storica dell’arte e giornalista, scrive su “Il Giornale dell’Arte”, “Il Giornale dell’Architettura” e “The Art Newspaper”. Le sue inchieste sono state citate dal “Corriere della Sera” e dal compianto Folco Quilici nel suo ultimo libro Tutt'attorno la Sicilia: Un'avventura di mare (Utet, Torino 2017). Come opinionista specializzata interviene spesso sulla stampa siciliana (“Gazzetta del Sud”, “Il Giornale di Sicilia”, “La Sicilia”, etc.). Dal 2006 al 2012 è stata corrispondente per il quotidiano “America Oggi” (New Jersey), titolare della rubrica di “Arte e Cultura” del magazine domenicale “Oggi 7”. Con un diploma di Specializzazione in Storia dell’Arte Medievale e Moderna, ha una formazione specifica nel campo della conservazione del patrimonio culturale (Carta del Rischio).
Following Caravaggio: how his language spread to Sicily. The exhibition in Messina
Severe and Miraculous. Following Caravaggio "with vigorous and dyed manner, " from July 28 to October 14 at MuMe, Regional Museum of Messina, is an exhibition with something of another era. The dry and rigorous set-up concedes nothing to the expectat...Read more...
Alessandra Guerrini (National Museums Genoa): completely untether museums from superintendencies
It is one of the largest seventeenth- and eighteenth-century architectural complexes in Genoa, with reception halls complete with frescoes, stuccoes, paintings, sculptures, furniture and furnishings that belonged to the noble and royal families who i...Read more...
Paola D'Agostino (Bargello): the MiC staff should be strengthened and those who work seriously should be rewarded
The news had been circulating for a few weeks, and indeed the new Prime Ministerial Decree has expanded the podium of autonomous super-museums to include the Bargello Museums, the focus of our new interview with director Paola D'Agostino. An advancem...Read more...
Stefano L'Occaso (Ducal Palace): Autonomy has given us a new way of looking at things
We had launched our survey to take stock almost ten years after the Franceschini Reform before the public selection for the position of director of autonomous museums came out. Now that the public selection is underway our interviews with outgoing di...Read more...
Inquiry into museum reform, part 4. Tiziana Maffei (Reggia di Caserta) speaks.
Architects, art historians, hydraulic, electrical and management engineers, landscape conservators, botanists, agronomists, stone restorers and rup. The Royal Palace of Caserta, an immense royal residence, Italy's Versailles, behind its Baroque splen...Read more...
Inquiry into museum reform, part 3. Martina Bagnoli (Estensi Galleries) speaks.
"Digitization of the collections not as an appendix but as an essential tool of research and enhancement" and making the visitor experience "memorable": these are the two distinctive traits Martina Bagnoli claims in her direction of the Estense Galle...Read more...
The Portella della Ginestra Anti-Mafia Memorial: a page in the history of protection written
On May 3 in the Pier Santi Mattarella Hall of the Sicilian Regional Assembly, Ars, in Palermo, a page was written in the history of Sicilian cultural heritage protection. And of the entire nation. During the conference The Portella della Ginestra Mem...Read more...
Inquiry into museum reform, part 2. Paolo Giulierini speaks
"We can say that MANN has never been so great." This was stated by the director of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Paolo Giulierini. The reference, out of metaphor, is precisely to the construction sites, from the "historic opening" on ...Read more...
Inquiry into museum reform, part 1. Cecilie Hollberg and James Bradburne speak
"Human resource management is the biggest weakness of the reform," per James Bradburne. "The director of an autonomous museum is a 'pseudo-employer' who, however, does not make decisions": who is convinced of this is Cecilie Hollberg. With the double...Read more...
Spotlight Inquiry. Autonomous museums: let's take stock almost ten years after the reform
The contracts of 14 super-directors of museums and archaeological sites with special autonomy will soon expire. Among others, in September it will be the turn of Paolo Giulierini, head of the MANN, National Archaeological Museum of Naples; in October...Read more...
Girolamo Alibrandi's Madonna in Messina: what's next?
What happens now? The curtain has come down in Messina after the day of celebration, the day of"revelation," last December 12. In the etymological sense of "removing the veil," of the red drape pulled down together with his mother Maria Grazia by an ...Read more...
How are the Riace Bronzes on the 50th anniversary of their discovery?
On the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Riace Bronzes, everything has been talked and written about, but too little about the "health" of the two warriors. Yet precisely the conservation aspects in the recent past have been the Achilles' heel...Read more...
Anastylosis of three columns from Temple G at Selinunte: much marketing, little archaeology
It's done. This time. It had been talked about since the 1970s. The reconstruction of Selinunte's Temple G, the largest temple in Sicily (109 meters long and 50 meters wide), and one of the largest in the ancient Mediterranean, comes in the form of t...Read more...
The new Icom definition of a museum? Timid and disregards the lessons of the pandemic
There is no trace of it. In the new definition of "museum" by ICOM, International Council of Museums, which may well respond better to a contemporary, inclusive museum concept, such as was needed until the health emergency from Covid-19, the very yea...Read more...
Once upon a time in Sicily there were Superintendencies...
"For some, pharmacological action is necessary, while for others deep surgery is needed." It was in these terms that the president of the Sicilian Region, Nello Musumeci, spoke about the superintendencies in a conference at Palazzo d'Orleans,...Read more...
Who decides on art lending? The situation in Italy and the differences in Sicily
Beyond the cultural opportunities that need to be screened from time to time, how are works loaned from our museums? who authorizes? who expresses opinions? who verifies the conservation status of the goods and that their handling is done saf...Read more...
Artwork loans, Sicily gives lessons: generous with Greece, succubus with the Met
The agreement between Sicily and Greece on the temporary loan aimed at the final restitution of a fragment of a slab belonging to the eastern frieze of the Parthenopean, the so-called "Fagan Exhibit," currently housed at the Salinas Museum in Pal...Read more...
The Manifesto on Cultural Rights and Duties: good, but missing the sign on the right to work
On November 30, the "Manifesto on Cultural Rights and Duties," promoted by the Democratic Party, was presented in Palermo at the Palazzo dei Normanni and the Salinas Archaeological Museum. The aim of the document is "the recognition, protection...Read more...
Island and Sea. In the Aeolian Islands, the exhibition that tells the story of the sea with the works of 19 artists
Island and sea. Telling in images about water. On an island. Trivialization is the most predictable of ambushes that the ease of the theme could tend to. And instead by "complicating" with content, with variations on the theme, with intriguing ju...Read more...
Inquiry into Sicily's archaeological parks, part 2. Protection crushed by politics
Read the first part of the survey In autonomous state institutes, parks, as well as museums, Cda, Committee and Board of Auditors are three collegial bodies with clearly distinct tasks. The absence of these indispensable governance bodies ...Read more...
Inquiry into Sicily's archaeological parks, part 1. Mayors as superintendents
"The great effort to which the future is called is to achieve the maximum possible objective knowledge to be placed as the basis for policy decisions," jurist Feliciano Benvenuti wrote in 2006. Confusing the plans between those who should provide t...Read more...
Is it Caravaggio? The distance between a reckless hypothesis and an authoritative unbalance
Here we go again: a "reckless" news story (that's what I called it in La Repubblica), bounced around the press and television, complete with coverage on RAI, even the "Caravaggio" under the lens in Madrid has already earned it. An appendix dete...Read more...
From the shipwrecks of antiquity to the drama of migrants. Major exhibition on the Mediterranean in Palermo
Sicily also restarts. On Feb. 16, the exhibition Terracqueo, curated by the Frederick II Foundation, reopened. The Royal Palace of Palermo continues to be a symbol, as it was in ancient times, of coexistence among the peoples of the Mediterra...Read more...
The Catania Charter is a monstrous regulatory hybrid: rejecting it is a constructive no
Reducing to "oppositional political logic" the resounding rejection in the Culture Commission of the Sicilian Regional Assembly of the "Catania Charter," by which the Musumeci government wants to grant the cultural assets of its repositories for us...Read more...
All the contradictions of the Catania Charter: no to hasty abdication to the private sector
It came to order last Nov. 12, in the Culture Commission of theSicilian Regional Assembly, with a hearing of the regional councillor for cultural heritage and Sicilian identity Albero Samonà. We are talking about the "Catania Charter...Read more...
Is it right to lend for a fee the goods in Sicilian museum deposits? The opinions of experts
A solution to the age-old issue of deposits or, on the contrary, the shortest shortcut to the debasement and commercialization of assets protected by the Constitution and the Code? We are talking about the decree of last November 30, renamed the ...Read more...
Salvatore Settis speaks: "those who close museums consider human beings as mere bodies"
The draconian decision to keep museums closed (at least until January 15), regardless of the risk zones, makes it urgent to redefine the meaning and purposes of museums, with the necessary assimilation of a function that has long been recognized by...Read more...
Constitutionalist Grosso: "Unconstitutional to close museums? Very complex issue."
Yellow, orange and red: this is the "mobile" tricolor of Italy's health emergency. Unmovable seemed, on the other hand, the decision to maintain the closure of museums and places of culture after December 3: "we do not know how long it will be nece...Read more...
Sicily is about to deal the death blow to an agonizing heritage. The new decree on cultural heritage
"I am convinced that the devolution of cultural heritage and landscape to the Region of Sicily was a bad idea, contrary to the Constitution. Everything that followed is the consequence of that ill-fated decision in 1975. I will study this ddl careful...Read more...
Sicilian museums reopen--on paper
Since May 25, Sicilian museums have also reopened, preceded on the 18th by "archaeological parks and outdoor cultural sites." Only on paper, however. This is stipulated, in fact, by the May 17Ordinance signed by Regional President Nello Musumeci the ...Read more...
Museums in Sicily are not ready to reopen May 18. Here's what the directors say
Museums in Sicily will not reopen on May 18, as stipulated by the Dpcm of the so-called "Phase 2." The directors do not yet have any provisions on the matter. Although it is on the island, sooner than in the rest of Italy, that the talk with visi...Read more...
Art sublimates disease. An anti-Covid doctor analyzes some art masterpieces to look for pathologies
If art is also catharsis of suffering, comfort for the soul as well as delight for the eyes, in this our time of sickness and death we have gone in search of examples of works of art in which pathology, sublimated, has ceased to conjugate with pai...Read more...
Museums during coronavirus: essential public services...but off limits
Museums closed. This has never happened before for such a long and uncertain time. The measure established by the Prime Minister on March 9, among those aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19, invites reflection on what is also a record that It...Read more...
MuME in Messina, the largest museum in southern Italy. Part two
Here the first part of the service. It's raining at the museum If much remains to be done on the front of the enhancement and fruition of the Messina museum, the first emergency is undoubtedly the structural one. For decades the museu...Read more...
MuME in Messina, the largest museum in southern Italy. Part one
It is the largest museum in the South, the MuMe, Museo Regionale Interdisciplinare di Messina, with its 17,000 square meters compared to Capodimonte's 15,000 square meters. Along with its size, another strength compared to other large southern muse...Read more...
How Leonardo flew to the Louvre for an adverb. The views of Tomaso Montanari and Antonio Lampis
Leonardo da Vinci 's Vitruvian Man was finally displayed at the Louvre. But the matter should not be considered closed, since a legal issue remained to be resolved that may arise again in the future for other works that are on the list of the Galleri...Read more...
120 precious Sicilian artifacts away for an exhibition in Rome. But no talk of quid pro quo
Among the first applications of the new Sicilian regulations on loans, under which it is, in fact, the Assessore dei beni culturali who authorizes the loan of works of art and goods, is the one that saw 120 precious artifacts leave six regional mus...Read more...
Artwork loans, Sicily far west: technicians don't decide, politicians do
Sometimes it may be conservation reasons, in other cases the lack of cultural relevance of the event, or both together. And in still a few other cases, as with the loan of Leonardo'sVitruvian Man to the Louvre, regulatory issues are raised for th...Read more...
Heritage for rent. Sicily, ancient temples for mega DJ sets and advertisements: art is less and less everyone's asset
In one of Italy's most important archaeological parks, that of Syracuse, but not in the better-known Greek theater of Neapolis, but in the Akrai theater, 40 kilometers away in Palazzolo Acreide, an event was staged on Sept. 12 that respects the histo...Read more...
The palace of the Norman kings belongs to the city and the world: from Palermo a message of coexistence of cultures and peoples
Like the metatheater that places the theater itself, Castrum Superius, as the object of the play. The Palace of the Norman Kings is a meta-exhibition, in which the most daring project of the entire Middle Ages in the Mediterranean, the palace-fortres...Read more...
Out-of-control temperature, humidity, a suspicious stain: how do you preserve a Caravaggio?
"The fate of beauty is danger, and harm, if effective defense and protection mechanisms are not continually in action. Perfect appearance, created to edify the faith of the people or entertain the eyes of the powerful, is exposed to alteration, manip...Read more...
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Austria, in the Saalfelden Leogang region nature, traditions, music and adventurous experiences
Redazione - 23/04/2024 -
The treasures of Sant'Agnese in Agone, a sumptuous baroque temple in Rome
Andrea Fusani - 21/04/2024 -
Entrepreneurs and art patrons of today's Tuscany: who they are and what they do
Federico Giannini, Ilaria Baratta - 16/04/2024 -
On the Tiber floodplain in Valtiberina, in the landscapes beloved by Pliny the Younger
Redazione - 14/04/2024 -
Rome, the route to discover ten of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's most famous works
Redazione - 11/04/2024 -
Portrait of a patron between Rome and the Apuan Alps: cardinal Alderano Cybo
Fabrizio Federici - 05/04/2024
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