The controversy: Bonami is a white male cis feeding retrograde ideas. He doesn't go for it

Those who don’t frequent the caverns of Instagram will surely have missed the controversy of the summer: a group of artists and curators accused their colleague Francesco Bonami (artistic director of the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, former Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and honorary director of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo) of making fun of issues related to gender identity and decolonization for a video he posted on Instagram last July 7. It all stemmed from an article published two days earlier in The Art Newspaper and signed by Lisa Movius: in the article, Movius questioned why top positions in some of China ’s major museums (four cases are mentioned) are the preserve of white men.

The “white men” mentioned by the journalist include Bonami himself, who heads the new private By Art Matters museum in Hangzhou, designed by Renzo Piano. A museum that, the article says, “will open later this year under the remote direction of Italian super-curator, U.S.-resident Francesco Bonami, supported by an on-site assistant director, Wu Tian.” Movius, which focuses on three other museums, disputes that the appointments all involve Western men who have little experience in Asia, and that three of them work remotely from abroad (a feature, the latter, facilitated by the Covid pandemic). According to Movius, however, this is a widespread problem, and one that affects not only China but also the West: the views of an anonymous manager who complains that although most of the staff in Western museums are women, the directors are often white men are reported. Then, for China, there is the language limitation that hinders effective leadership, according to the article: without language skills, the piece says, Western directors are “puppets” who talk to the media, act as image-men for the museum giving an international touch, but in the end it is always others who do the real work. “The phenomenon,” Movius further points out, “mirrors the tendency to recruit established Western curators, mostly white and male, to direct Asian biennials and triennials, or the dominance of Western artists in Chinese museum exhibitions and auction sales.” In essence, Movius concludes, “the stereotype of professional authority as white and male still dominates in China.” To improve the situation, according to the journalist, it might be helpful to establish more collaborations between Chinese museums and international museums, to offer better recognition and better salaries to local curators to help them emerge by countering the brain drain, and to make museums see each other as colleagues and not competitors.

Bonami, as mentioned, entrusted his response to a video on his Instagram channel, calling the article “totally inappropriate and incorrect, if not politically incorrect.” What infuriated several people, however, were the reasons why Bonami felt the article was inappropriate, since instead of responding on the merits, the curator preferred to be ironic. First, says Bonami, “the article assumes that because of the way we look inside ourselves, we always feel like old Western males, and this is not true: for example, in my case I often feel that I am a 35-year-old Iranian lesbian, so they cannot know how I feel inside.” Bonami also jokes about the adjective “white”: “as you see,” he says, “in the picture we have white hair, so I don’t understand what the article is referring to when it talks about white.” Still, says Bonami, the article does not take into consideration the fact that in China “all people are very honored, so they probably feel that as old curators we need to be honored and helped in the last years of our lives.” Finally, a final ironic lunge: “throughout Asia, the prostate of a 35-year-old or elderly person is considered a kind of cult object, and in some cultures it is also considered a culinary delicacy.”

The response was not long in coming, and a group of artists and curators (among whom stand out the names of Milovan Farronato, curator of the Italian Pavilion at the last Venice Biennale, artist Paulina Orlowska, curator Matteo Lucchetti of the Pistoletto Foundation, and critic and art historian Stella Bottai: in all, there are about forty of them) published a harsh open letter against Bonami. “We must assume,” the letter reads, “that by announcing his nonbinary identity he is actually resigning from his current post in Hangzhou, since he could not hold such a high-profile public role in China as a young Iranian trans woman. Of course not. He is a cis male white to the bone. For Bonami, gender identity seems to be a disposable party hat with no trauma attached. He does not seem to care about the real-life experience of discrimination and homophobia suffered by many, nor that homosexuality in Iran is illegal and punished by imprisonment and even execution.”

The letter also accuses the Florentine curator of superficiality:“If Bonami had really bothered to read the full Movius article, he would have known that the point of this news report is to criticize the lack of commitment at the Chinese national level to foster better job opportunities and development paths for Chinese professionals. One wonders why this seems so wrong to Mr. Bonami-so wrong as to deserve public ridicule.” And then comes a direct accusation: “regardless of the power and fame he has earned, Bonami feels insecure and threatened by social change and the younger generation to the point of lashing out at them in the public sphere. Has he ever thought about how his own work would have developed very differently if all the professional opportunities he received in Italy in the past had been denied him, and instead reserved for foreign professionals invited to show the country ’how it’s done’?” Finally, the final lunge: “Bonami belongs to a generation of cultural leaders with ample power, budget and influence who are shaping the present and future for global institutions and artists. So when we hear him speak in this way, we feel emotionally shaken, we feel panic and anger. The purpose of this letter is to call on Mr. Bonami to stop inciting viewpoints that regard gender and racial issues, as well as decolonization, as ridiculous issues. It is offensive and dangerous to other citizens in less privileged positions than his. Please show empathy. It is devastating to see someone who supposedly has all the intellectual tools, and whose job should be intrinsically connected to cultivating imagination and freedom, actively choose to influence public opinion in the direction of retrograde ideas that feed and amplify our already highly polarized society. Please, Mr. Bonami, stop venting and let others live.”

Bonami then responded to the letter with a second video (though much less viewed than the first: to date 3,900 views compared to about 9,000 for the first), this time, however, characterized by serious tones. “I was accused of making fun of some important issues,” the curator premised. "The Art Newspaper did not mention the thousands of other museums in China that are directed and curated by Chinese curators and directors, so three white curators working and collaborating with three recognized Chinese museums are but a small drop in the vast landscape of Chinese museums. Second, I am accused of only promoting my role as ’super curator,’ which I don’t even know what that means. I would like to emphasize that I am an art director for artistic reasons. I collaborate and work with a fantastic team of young Chinese curators and professionals, in an open exchange, I learn from them and I hope (because this is my role) to be able to teach them something that will help them develop their visions and professional skills, and I hope to receive from them their visions to open my closed mind."

As for the issue ofgender identity, Bonami says, “They say that in Iran homosexuality is punished by law, and on that basis they try to see me as a person who does not take these issues seriously. In the era of fluid gender identity, I don’t understand why my joking about this issue is taken as an offense-I was trying to point out the exact opposite, that is, I was trying to make the point that the issue of gender identity is very serious, while focusing on three male and white curators is a distraction from more important and very dramatic issues.” Then, on the issue of opportunity: “I have never been denied opportunities and so I cannot understand how other curators feel when opportunities to direct and curate institutes and exhibitions are denied. However, I would like to remind those who signed the letter that I have never been offered the directorship of an American museum, where I have lived for thirty-five years, I have never been offered the directorship of an Italian public museum, because I am quite straightforward on many issues and many people would not like to have me around as the director of an institution.” Finally, Bonami closes this way, “I would like to give a piece of advice: there are very serious problems in the world and in the art world, so take them seriously, but please do not take yourself too seriously, because when you take yourself too seriously you do a disservice to the problems you want to address.”

Supporting Bonami were critic Jerry Saltz, TV host Costantino della Gherardesca, and Vogue Italia’s brand visual director Alessia Glavano, among others. Controversy over? Who knows?

In the photo: Francesco Bonami

The controversy: Bonami is a white male cis feeding retrograde ideas. He doesn't go for it

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