There is controversy in Genoa over the words Luca Bizzarri, actor, comedian, and former president of Palazzo Ducale, has addressed to the current management of the palace, the city’s main cultural hub. An attack came on the afternoon of Monday, August 18: “I am getting more and more disconcerting news,” began Bizzarri’s post on his Facebook profile. “I hope the new junta will be able to resolve a rather embarrassing situation. I like to remember how Serena [ed. note: Bertolucci, former director of Palazzo Ducale] and I were put under daily scrutiny by the Genoese press, the administration, and the opposition (’we had no friends’). I remember how annoying it was that I had nothing to lose and, above all, nothing to gain. Now I feel a great silence, no one seems to want to point out how it is going, how it is going, the most important cultural center in Liguria. If it is still, a cultural hub.”
The post accompanied an article in the online newspaper LiguriaDay that gave an account of the situation at Palazzo Ducale in these weeks of August: according to the headline, weighing on the cultural center would be the lack of summer programming, the few guided tours throughout the month, the reduced hours for information and ticketing, and then there is only one exhibition open, that of Jacopo Benassi in the Loggia degli Abati, while no exhibition is set up in the Doge’s apartments (which are the heart of the Doge’s Palace, the space where the main exhibitions are set up). Finally, fall programming, according to the Genoese newspaper, would be underwhelming.
But it is above all the close of Bizzarri’s comment that has accessed the controversy, so much so that following his post the current president, Beppe Costa, who took over from Bizzarri in 2022 after five years of the actor’s leadership, intervened, and is expiring, since according to the statute of the Fondazione Palazzo Ducale the board of directors lapses with the end of the mayor’s term: the appointment of the new president is therefore expected soon, after the new mayor of Genoa, Silvia Salis, already appointed in late July the councilors expressed by the city, among whom the president is elected (they are Sara Armella, who is expected to become the new president, Massimiliano Morettini and Mitchell Wolfson). Costa made a comment to the columns of the Secolo XIX: “Bizzarri,” he said, “is a public figure and is obviously free to express himself but I think that post is not respectful of the quality, very high, of the people who work at the Ducale. Our way of communicating is certainly different from that of those who came before us, it is a very fact-based way, but that the Ducale has not lost its function and attractiveness is shown by the numbers of public and private events, which have been largely satisfactory, as is also shown by the fact that many times, during events, we have had to close access because there was no more room.” On the absence of major exhibitions during this period, Costa replies, “In August, nowhere tends to have major exhibitions.”
No comment, the Secolo XIX also reports, from current director Ilaria Bonacossa, who took Serena Bertolucci’s place in 2024. Instead, Genoa City Councilor for Culture Giacomo Montanari comments, “We are in a moment of change in the governance of the Ducale and this phase of impasse implies a period of silence. We had set ourselves the goal of making all decisions by July to proceed with the renewal of appointments and think about new programming: as a municipality we have done so, designating our representatives on the board of directors, but we still have no news on the formalization of appointments by the Region.” Montanari adds that he does not feel like judging the activity of the current governance, “partly because the time frame in which it has operated has been too short. Some exhibition choices have been of lesser appeal, but we need to evaluate what we are interested in in making culture: whether we are only interested in numerical data or whether, instead, we are interested in a cultural instance, and in the latter case more time is needed to be objective in our judgments. After that, I always seize with pleasure that those who care about institutions also raise alarms, which can be food for thought for the future.”
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| Genoa, controversy over Luca Bizzarri's words on Palazzo Ducale |
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