The Italian Council is currently Italy’s main public instrument for supporting contemporary creativity in the visual arts. It has certainly contributed substantially to bridging a gap in the contemporary art system in Italy with others globally. Perfectible certainly, the Italian Council has from the beginning, just as surely, had the merit of helping to make the Italian contemporary art system more sustainable and active, freeing it, at least in part, from often oppressive customs and mechanics. A system that, in need of an adjustment that can no longer be postponed, also thanks to the Italian Council, is now more in line with the policies now consolidated in the rest of the world supported by similar instruments, capable of creating international networks, aimed at the knowledge and dissemination of Italian art in the world, actively contributing to the development of artistic research in contact with similar realities beyond the border. In this sense, public support for contemporary art and its international (as well as national) promotion and dissemination through the provision of grants for residencies abroad and for artistic, critical and curatorial research is undoubtedly the Italian Council’s greatest asset, the fundamental piece of the opportunities it offers artists, curators and critics.
But that’s not all: over the last few years, Italian Council has undergone substantial transformations and has become an instrument capable of supporting the entire national contemporary supply chain since today it does not promote only one artist (who remains the main beneficiary), but all the actors who in various ways contribute to the success of the project: from museums, foundations, associations, cultural institutions, public bodies and private non-profits. In the face of this, we can say that today the Italian Council is a substantial element of the sustainability-not only economic-of the contemporary art system in Italy, offering a direct contribution to creative production, something not taken for granted today considering the general and progressive contraction both in theinterest and of investment in culture in general both at the national level (just think of the recent cuts in the budget law) and by municipalities and local authorities, still too often oblivious to the many opportunities for investment and support for culture, including contemporary culture, which leads to an underutilization of project potential. The possibility of access to stabilized funds can allow the development of more structured and structural projects, not otherwise possible with the forces of individual actors alone, which certainly go to impact in a positive sense the creative choices of artists but also the interests of collectors and museums.
In this panorama, then, the allocation of resources specifically dedicated to promoting contemporary art by means of a call for proposals has certainly represented a great leap in quality (and quantity) compared to a historical period in which availabilities were meager and often allocated without transparent rules. But precisely on the mode of allocation it should be noted that while the mode of allocation through “competition” certainly has the advantage of transparency in economic management, on the other hand it itself is the Italian Council’s greatest flaw: the continued recourse to the mode of “competition” funding cannot be considered the ultimate solution. There is a need to go further, of course while remaining as transparent as possible, but leaving the organizations and all those involved free to contribute to a broader and more common strategy to be achieved, forcing everyone to make a joint effort.
Because by definition a call for proposals has specific requirements, determined, often rigid boundaries, which sometimes do not encourage cultural organizations to develop but to find ways to fit within those boundaries in order to be funded, perhaps without sharing its objectives or overall design. Because the problem today lies not only in the capacity to generate cultural value, it also lies in the design capacity to give substance to that value, an element the latter too often lacking especially in the (not only) smaller contemporary realities, which struggle most to emerge, especially in the south of the peninsula, implicitly ending up favoring more structured and self-sufficient organizations. I’m thinking of those individual artists, or those laboratories for the production of art, culture and ideas, that operate widespread in different territories, difficult or peripheral perhaps, that are not only concentrated in large centers, that do not have the resources and technical professionalism to baste and manage a project in response to a specific “call,” but that are fully capable of encouraging dialogue between different expressions of creativity and therefore need to be supported as effectively. Making use of open and transparent accreditation procedures, for example, with an ongoing dialogue that generates fiduciary relationships based on shared goals and mechanisms for project comparison on the “upside,” would create a virtuous circle that is less sectoral and dispersive than periodic calls for proposals, and therefore more effective from a national structural enhancement perspective and of all the resources involved.
So all that glitters is not gold: the Italian Council is a great opportunity, but after almost a decade, it must grow, or the risk will be that of sclerotizing despite everything, of being interpreted increasingly tout court as THE solution to more general problems: first and foremost of lack of funds, but also of interpretation of the very purposes of designing the contemporary from a truly national perspective, ending up being relegated to being a “stopgap” for an overall national strategy that is still lacking (let us simply recall that precisely on the issue of a national strategy today we are witnessing the often parallel and unconcerted coexistence of Italian Council and PAC projects).
This contribution was originally published in No. 25 of our print magazine Finestre Sull’Arte on paper, erroneously in an abridged form. Click here to subscribe.
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.
