Vittorio Sgarbi takes office as MART's new president. I want free collections like in England

Vittorio Sgarbi ’s first meeting with the press was held today in his capacity as the new president of MART - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Sgarbi had been appointed last February as president of the important Trentino institute, and during the meeting he said he wanted to take the nuiovo position “with a great spirit of responsibility, aware of the peculiarities of MART and Trentino. The greater autonomy and the fresh and efficient administration of this territory, the enviable geographical position have allowed the Mart to be today the Italian museum with the most distinct identity and the richest collection. The Mart was born strong: it has always done and does large and important exhibitions.”

Sgarbi immediately proposed that the Mart’s permanent collections should become free for everyone and always: “the museum,” he said, “must be the citizens’ home, an open house always, as happens in London and many other places in the world.” The paid ticket could remain as a title linked to temporary exhibitions that have costs for management, transportation, organization and promotion. Italians, Sgarbi hopes, “should frequent museums as they frequent restaurants,” that is, continuously. And it is precisely on restaurateurs and hoteliers that Sgarbi is betting heavily: they will be the first ambassadors of the territory and the museum whose tickets they will be able to buy for their guests or encourage, with modalities to be defined, “a ticketing that involves anyone who passes through the city and makes them understand that they can’t miss a visit to the Mart!”

Sgarbi’s goal is to network not only locally, but also nationally: “everything we do,” he said, “will have to reverberate in a national and international dimension.” And on “what we’re going to do,” the newly appointed president already has clear ideas: he has launched a proposal for an exhibition on Antonio Canova and the modern, opening to a collaboration with the Canova Foundation in Possagno, of which he is already president. But that’s not all: ideas for an exhibition on so-called degenerate art (“artists invised by Nazism such as Picasso, Kandinsky, Braque, Chagall,” he explained, “have been ennobled to the point of becoming the sine qua non for contemporary art as we understand it today. Contemporary art was born when Hitler tried to kill it.”) and another on the history of photography. Finally, Sgarbi proposed a dedicated venue for the works of Trentino artists such as Paolo Vallorz, Luigi Bonazza and Umberto Moggioli.

Vittorio Sgarbi takes office as MART's new president. I want free collections like in England

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