Opinions

National mourning for the pope, but where is the cultural disaster? Almost everywhere is business as usual

Meanwhile, what does the dpcm that decreed the five days of national mourning provide (totally unprecedented: in recent history, there had been no national mourning until John XXIII, then one day for Paul VI and John Paul I, and three days for John P...
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Is contemporary art today an emancipatory gesture or is it an aesthetic commodity to be consumed?

Asart pushes the extreme boundaries of society, a subtle and unsettling tension comes into play: are we witnessing an act of emancipation, a gesture that redefines dominant narratives, or are we observing the mutation of discomfort into an aesthetic ...
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Italian Council: better few but good

The Italian Council, a project of the Ministry of Culture's General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity, has aimed to promote Italian contemporary art since 2017. Over the years, its mission has been renewed and expanded, managing to support and ...
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If the television Van Gogh is Alberto Angela's, then indeed Temptation Island.

Let's start with the big picture: years of studies, exhibitions, books, articles, and various and sundry activities to couple all the stereotypes about Vincent van Gogh, to convey to the public the idea that the figure of Van Gogh was slightly more c...
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Agrigento 2025 is a disaster for now: the Italian capital of culture still in chaos

The general director of the Agrigento 2025 Foundation, Roberto Albergoni, resigned on March 25. He announced this through Repubblica, the newspaper that a few weeks earlier had broken the news that some of the planned events would be skipped-the foun...
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Florence, the work of Thomas J. Price? A trivial rehash: the interesting topic is another

In Florence's Piazza della Signoria for about five centuries, every day of the year, a clothed woman has been about to cut off the head of a man, inert and asleep at her feet, whose head she holds by the hair. If a feminist movement had wanted to cho...
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On the usefulness and effectiveness of the Italian Council.

The question to ask in order to evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of the goals and initiatives implemented by the Italian Council is one: have they really contributed to increasing the presence of Italian artists in international museums and ...
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Florence, why is Giannelli no good and Price is?

Problem: Given the indignant shrieks with which insiders have been accompanying the installation of Emanuele Giannelli's sculptures in front of the headquarters of the Region of Tuscany in Florence for days, the candidate should explain, possibly con...
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Art and climate change: contribution or contradiction?

In December 2018, the South Bank esplanade in London was transformed into a scene of stark beauty. Blocks of ice, ripped from the heart of the Arctic, materialized among the buildings and lights of the city thanks to the artistic intervention of Olaf...
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Ministry export offices: should they be made "autonomous"?

It has already been amply clarified and repeated how the Renzi-Franceschini reform of 2015 has distorted the technical-scientific imprint of the ministry imagined by Giovanni Spadolini-valued and kept alive in Florence until the presence in service o...
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The art of non-places: how to give meaning to a space that doesn't have it

We live in an age where places, those defined as such, have become increasingly liquid, undefined. Geography, as we perceive it, has changed. Almost without realizing it, we have found ourselves immersed in spaces that are no longer tied to the histo...
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Has futurism in Rome made its way into the hearts of Italians? Perhaps not

Two more months of the Futurism exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art: the extension for the exhibition, which was supposed to end last Feb. 28, comes after the Ministry of Culture found it to be a success. For Minister Al...
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The Italian art market between legal challenges and opportunities

The Italian art market is faced with challenges involving both the regulatory framework and the need for renewal of a bureaucratic-administrative apparatus that, by its very nature, adapts with difficulty to the dynamics of a rapidly changing sector....
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The controversy against Giannelli and Lodola in Florence? Crocodile tears of insiders.

There is a lot of talk about some artworks deemed "not appropriate" and installed in the historic center of Florence, in the specific case of Emanuele Giannelli and Marco Lodola. It is rightly criticized that these works have plummeted from the sky w...
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The influence of social: how much does an artist count outside Instagram?

In a world increasingly dominated by image culture, Instagram has turned into one of the most powerful tools for contemporary artists. It is not just a platform for sharing one's work, but a true digital exhibition space, capable of connecting the ar...
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Reducing VAT on works: the art world's crocodile tears

The failure to decrease VAT is certainly a problem for the Italian art market, which is losing competitiveness with galleries from France, Germany and around the world. But this is not the pincer that suffocates the art market, especially if we think...
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