Opinions

How the Franceschini reform has profoundly affected the Ministry of Culture

The reorganization of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism implemented between 2014 and 2016 constitutes a turning point in the history of the country's cultural heritage protection system: the "Franceschini reform," in fact, ...
Read more...

Miart 2024: but is there really little subject matter or is it winking at the market?

"Gran traduttor dè traduttor d'Omero," wrote Ugo Foscolo about the man of letters Vincenzo Monti. Here is the thought that came to my mind about Miart, Edition 2024. In the maze of the route between the various pavilions, the galleries are no...
Read more...

On the maternity sculpture in Milan: a technical committee should give technical opinions

In some ways, what is happening around the sculpture of motherhood donated by Vera Omodeo's heirs to the City of Milan is reminiscent of a recent episode that occurred in Carrara, just before the Christmas holidays. A former professor of the Carrara ...
Read more...

The Franceschini reforms: a review ten years later

When Franceschini's 'reforms' were adopted, the Cultural Heritage Administration had been languishing for at least twenty years due to lack of means and personnel, antiquated organization, complex procedures and functional impairments caused by regul...
Read more...

Do state museums really not know how to organize important exhibitions anymore?

In Italy there existed a sort of golden age of exhibitions, full of events of international scope and the result of prestigious collaborations and full-bodied loan campaigns, which today is inexorably over, the accomplice of an autarchy into which ou...
Read more...

Ten years of Franceschini reform: a reform by halves

That Franceschini's was a perfectible reform is known: "a reform by halves," I would say. That it is not well-loved, also, it must be said; that for better or worse, then, it has shaken up the system, and that it has had some positive insights, few h...
Read more...

Agrigento's telamon, symbol of the Sicilian region's upside-down world

Looking and looking again at the telamon of Agrigento, which has created so much stir in the world of archaeologists (much less so in that of architects, and this is no accident), I was reminded of the rhetorical figures of the mundus inversus recoun...
Read more...

The work of art and the reproduction of its images. An open debate

The question of the relationship between the work of art and its image, understood as an instrument of communication, dissemination and knowledge, is a figure of great theoretical interest, a symptom that imposes itself on our attention in the presen...
Read more...

Giotto at the airport? The real issue is our relationship with heritage

I am asked by "Finestre Sull'Arte" for an opinion on the display at Fiumicino airport of three large panels of the stained-glass window that originally stood at the end of the right aisle of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. Erratic panels tha...
Read more...

Paying for cultural heritage images: what model should be referred to?

The enactment of the "Tarasco" decree(call it by its name) and the almost simultaneous court rulings in Florence have suddenly reawakened the debate on the management of reproductions of public cultural property. Decree and rulings have in fact marke...
Read more...

Can the Venice Biennale claim to have decolonialist intentions?

Biennial out of control. Curators have to choose from a given menu, and if that menu is mediocre, the Biennale will be no different. Contemporary art has gone through two crises (2001 and 2009) that have caused it to lose its ability to read the pres...
Read more...

Reproduction of cultural heritage images: between open access and forms of control

Images of cultural heritage are an incredible resource for access to culture and the dissemination of knowledge of Italy's cultural heritage around the world. Although technological development and the spread of digital media have made access to digi...
Read more...

But do exhibitions in Italy really suck as much as Nicola Lagioia says they do?

Is there really a gulf separating Italy's exhibition offerings from those of countries like France or even the Netherlands? While in Paris hordes of visitors, including Italians, remain enraptured among the rooms of the Rothko exhibition at the Fonda...
Read more...

A legal monster roams Italy: the right to the image of cultural property

Italy's latest disputes over the commercial use of images of Michelangelo's David (GQ and Brioni cases) and Leonardo'sVitruvian Man (Ravensburger case) emerge judicially at the same time that the reproduction of the image of Botticelli's Venus for th...
Read more...

Contemporary exhibitions in a 14th-century church. When can it be done? The case of Pietrasanta

If an ancient church becomes a venue for contemporary art exhibitions, how blurry is the line between a layout that respects its spaces and one that is instead heavy and invasive to the point of spoiling the perception of the spaces? Increasingly, bu...
Read more...

Name tickets at the Colosseum: useful, but there are problems to be solved

The climate at the Colosseum continues to be "hot" with controversy. In recent weeks, articles have been coming out voicing the discontent of various agencies and tour operators regarding the named ticket introduced at the Colosseum Park as of last O...
Read more...