Sgarbi's exhibition in Bologna: five reasons why it's not a good idea

Much has already been written about the exhibition Da Cimabue a Morandi, the Genus Bononiae project curated by Sgarbi that is being mounted next year in Bologna’s Palazzo Fava. There would not be much to add to what Romeo Cristofori wrote in Mostre-rò in a very sensible piece, which I agree with. Also in relation to the Longinian references in the title of the project. I will add just one thing: we at Windows on Art have also joined the appeal to stop the exhibition, and if you readers also want to add your signatures, you can do so by clicking on this link where you will find the references.

Some considerations, however, are necessary. The last few years of Italian political life have led us to develop a particularly Manichean mindset, which always leads us to think that on an issue there must necessarily be two opposing factions, one that embodies the positive aspects and one that is the repository of the negative ones. And generally those who take one side tend to attribute to their opponents the opposite qualities to those they think they represent. The Bologna exhibition is no exception. Sgarbi’s supporters lash out at the “professors,” the “barons,” who are guilty of immobilism and elitism, and above all, of initiating their action out of simple dislike and prejudice against Sgarbi. On the other hand, there are those who regard Sgarbi as a mere entertainer (to say the least) and thus, in turn, preemptively lash out against everything he does or says.

First of all, it must be said that it would be better for everyone to overcome these attitudes, and to understand, in this case, that on the one hand, the problem is not Sgarbi (I am convinced that the exhibition would have received the same kind of criticism even if it had been curated by anyone else) and among the signatories of the appeal there are also people who are far from the logic of elitist immobilism and academicism, and that on the other hand, if there are so many people who like Sgarbi when he talks about art, one must at least pose the problem of understanding why Sgarbi’s artistic communication is interesting to many.

Having made this premise to clear the field and to affirm our total lack of prejudice of any kind, I reiterate Finestre sull’Arte ’s opposition to the Da Cimabue a Morandi project for at least five reasons, which I will list:

1. The exhibition lacks a project and objectives. To package an exhibition, it is not enough to make a selection of works united only by the fact that they were produced in Bologna. Such an operation, which could be conducted by anyone (just open an art history textbook and see where the artists were born or where the works were made, even without much knowledge on the subject), what can it leave the public with? How can it “enhance the education of the public,” as Sgarbi himself says? That is, what can the public learn from such an exhibition? The fact that Bologna had its “artistic excellence,” as stated during the presentation? So, since we are talking about “excellencies” (a term that referring to artists in the history of art sounds a bit strange to me) linked to the territory, why not create paths to bring Bolognese and non-Bolognese to discover these “excellencies” directly in the places where they are preserved?
   
   
2. Some works are ripped out of their "natural context." With the aggravating factor that this natural context is only a few dozen meters from Palazzo Fava. This kind of operation is always very delicate, even during exhibitions of important value. All the more so it should be avoided for exhibitions organized according to very weak criteria. Bologna is a city that has so much to offer, and the best way to discover what it has produced over the centuries is to go and see it in churches, museums, palaces, parks, on the streets, in places of aggregation. That is to say, in the living places of the city, all of which will become less alive with such an operation.
   
   
3. The exhibition’s spectrum of action is too broad. To think of treating, with a single exhibition, a period of art history that starts from the Middle Ages and goes up to the twentieth century, makes little sense since it is not possible to condense trends, styles, movements, episodes in a visit that for most of the public will not last more than a couple of hours: it is obvious that the knowledge that the public will be able to draw from the exhibition will be more than superficial.
   
   
4. Bologna’s museums are being impoverished. The Sgarbian project wants to take away from almost all of Bologna’s museums many of their best pieces, which also serve as “business cards” for the museums themselves and attract audiences. And so it is conceivable that such an operation will go on to cause declines in audiences for Bologna’s museums, when they would instead need greater inflows and policies to encourage visitation.
   
   
5. The exhibition has a very low regard for the public that will visit it. Sgarbi’s assertion that people are “lazy” and would rather see all the works gathered in a single anthological exhibition than see them in museums, in addition to being completely unprovable and insufficient to justify such an exhibition, is also unkind to the public: so those who will go to see this exhibition will be a public that does not feel like going to see churches and museums? Then what does this audience do the rest of the year? And even if this were true, why should products that pander to the supposed laziness of the public be encouraged rather than promoting initiatives that instead educate them to a more correct and natural approach to art?
   
   

On many of these topics (“blockbuster” exhibitions, public perception, the goals of an exhibition) there would be much to say, and the space of a single post, focusing on a single project, is not enough: which is why we will return to these issues. However, there is a lesson we can learn from the Bologna affair: the public feels art, and it shows this by following the discussion with transport. Therefore, it is up to us to change the kind of approach to the public and put up all kinds of efforts to do quality popularization. Dissemination is the matter that connects scholars to the general public: if initiatives such as From Cimabue to Morandi are going to proliferate, it is also because there is a lack of that connection between scholars and the public that would allow, among so many other things, the former to make the importance of their work perceived by the latter, and the latter to distinguish a product of quality from one that is not of quality. Appeals, then, are important, but they are not enough: we need to work on bridging the gap between research and the public. There is still time; we just need to work better and work together.

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