Opinions

Alberto Angela and Temptation Island: Rai was right to suspend Noos

It takes perhaps a slight effort of immedesimation to overcome the knee-jerk reactions to theIndignez-vous that yesterday provoked uncontrollable disgust among culture-goers, stunned to learn that Rai decided to suspend and reschedule Noos, Alberto A...
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Museums, being inclusive and welcoming does not mean trivializing proposals

The participatory transformation of the modern museum should not be intense as a chase after distracted visitors, a sort of adaptation to a public that, more and more often, appears unaware and lost (but may it not be, rather, a consequence of the ex...
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Why the photograph of Trump with a raised fist can be held up as a symbol of our age

It is not difficult to recognize the reasons why the photograph of Donald Trump with his fist raised after the bombing (in which an innocent man lost his life, and two other people were seriously injured), a photojournalistic masterpiece by Evan Vucc...
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Museums in 2023 set records for visitors and revenue: what's behind the numbers

With the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic behind them, Italy's state museums are returning to the numbers of the past: and with the usual emphasis, the Ministry of Culture in recent days released figures for 2023, the first year of full operation ...
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Artistic heritage enlivened by music: the case of the Monteverdi Festival in Cremona

The city of Cremona is characterized, as is well known, by an outstanding musical tradition, which has its highest moments, on the one hand, in violin making and the figure of Antonio Stradivari and, on the other, in Claudio Monteverdi, who saw the l...
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If street art becomes a caricature of itself: the case of the Banksy Museum

The renowned and bustling Canal Street, located in the heart of Manhattan's Soho , has been selected as the site for the new Banksy Museum. Opened last May, the museum was founded by Hazis Vardar and is entirely dedicated to the famous British street...
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Because if we rely only on fairs, we risk killing contemporary art

To talk about the market today is to talk about art, artworks, and all the dynamics that strongly influence the lives of artists and, consequently, the making of artworks. In the last fifteen years we have witnessed the dominance of modern and contem...
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Why did the Cynical Beautician dinner in Braidense raise so much controversy?

I write as a frequenter of both the Braidense National Library and the Brera Art Gallery (also as a former friend of Brera), and as an art historian, with respect to the controversy stirred up by a video posted on Veralab's Instagram profile, in whic...
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Rome, Metro A turns into art gallery to raise awareness. Does it succeed?

Starting May 7, 2024, for five months, passengers on Rome's Metro A will find themselves inside a traveling art gallery. Mind The Earth is an innovative initiative, promoted by the nonprofit Yourban 2030 and inspired by the goals of Agenda 2030, whic...
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The main cause of overtourism is a certain way of narrating places

We read with interest this intervention by Giacomo Montanari on Finestre sull'Arte, which we share together with some observations, especially related to our Ligurian reality. For many years we have been continuing to reiterate, in the appropriate i...
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Against the barbarians of tourism. How to defend heritage in 10 rules

There is a problem related to tourism, including the purely cultural kind, that is, insisting on cultural places. And it makes little difference whether these places are monumental sites, museums, nature parks: as cultural heritage they are part of t...
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The media has a (big) problem with attribution in art

On May 14, at the Foreign Press Room at Palazzo Grazioli in Rome, a scholar of Renaissance art, Amel Olivares, told the journalists present that after an eight-year search, she had identified an alleged new work by Michelangelo, kept in a vault in Ge...
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The 2014 reform brought some cultural institutions back to the center of the debate

For very many years my legal training has puzzled me (obviously in vain) about the predominantly journalistic habit of linking reforms by the name of a politician, however deserving, rather than to the scope of the reform itself. Indeed, the fathers ...
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Franceschini reform: what went well, what didn't

It seems that the structural reforms of the former Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, now the Ministry of Culture (MiC) are set to follow one another on a 10-year cadence. Indeed, 2024 will bring us a new organizational structure, replacin...
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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, ...
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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...
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