We are receiving and publishing an open letter from CISDA - Committee of Eligible Art Historians of the competition inducted by the Ministry of Culture in 2022, which has as its theme the way art is communicated, especially on social media. The letter comes as a result of a reflection on Federico Giannini’s article titled Why it is almost impossible to find art criticism on social media (you can read it here): in fact, CISDA also aspires to analyze the current state of culture, the ministry’s reforms and the progressive impoverishment of the figure of the art historian, who is slowly disappearing from the ministry’s own staffing plans. And poor communication contributes to this impoverishment. After the photograph, the letter from CISDA.
Art History is one of the foundational disciplines of modern thought. It has played a key role in the birth of civil consciousness and the protection of our country’s Cultural Heritage. In this sense, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage itself, established in 1975, is the fruit of the efforts of many Art Historians. As early as 1863, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, addressing the then Minister Matteucci, denounced the urgency in post-unitary Italy of the conservation of “ancient monuments and fine arts,” while Adolfo Venturi, a few decades later, contributed to the university definition of the discipline. Palma Bucarelli, the first female director of an Italian public museum - the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome - played a key role in the promotion of Contemporary Art in our country, also revolutionizing the design of museum displays, with the promotion of the idea that the museum was not just a place of preservation, but of dialogue and discovery, and thus contributing to making Art more alive and closer to people. Fernanda Wittgens secured the works of Brera, Poldi Pezzoli and Ospedale Maggiore during World War II. Again, Roberto Longhi, in addition to his incredible contribution to the discipline, intervened, for example, in 1938 in the scientific definition of the Catalogue, suggesting a type of card that was to contain the essential and fundamental identifying data of the Work. In 1938 Cesare Brandi founded, with Giulio Carlo Argan, the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro - considered one of the main and most prestigious centers of excellence in the field of Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage worldwide, laying the philosophical and practical foundations for the concept of modern Protection and Restoration.
Figures, these, to whom can be added here, briefly, Lionello Venturi, Maria Andaloro, Ferdinando Bologna, Raffaello Causa, Antonio Paolucci, Salvatore Settis, Umberto Baldini, and many others, often working in or in close contact with the ministerial sphere. Their, work still shows how much Art History has been and should still be a discipline deeply linked to public responsibility, to a sense of community, capable of transforming erudition and knowledge of Works of Art into certain elements of civil consciousness necessary for the nourishment of national identity.
Art History and Art Criticism are disciplines concerned with investigating, analyzing, and interpreting the Work of Art and its context; their ultimate mission is to shape and direct the public’s perception of the civic importance held by our Heritage. However, in the last decade we are witnessing a gradual impoverishment of that purpose; there seems to be a lack of a shared tension toward taking responsibility for critical thinking.
The crisis of these disciplines-which, like others always of a humanistic nature, have suffered from reduced social and economic recognition for decades-is identified with the rise of new media, social media. Thus, the medium is no longer the book, the magazine or the television - indeed, one notices a gradual disappearance of scholarly programs dedicated to Art History on generalist TV. The actor is no longer the Art Historian but the Content Creator, fostering a new communication shaped by tweets, reels and memes, characterized by short, fast and impactful content, which favors a spectacularization of culture. A new way of communicating Art, often unsupported by any scientific rigor, which prefers a cultural experience aimed at entertainment, the salable, the “Instagrammable,” where the Work of Art is thus deprived of its values, its aura, becoming a consumer commodity.
This is the point: the Art Historian is an expert storyteller on the subject, clarifying for us how the Work of Art works, what distinguishes the original from the banal, placing it in its context of birth, tracing the fortunes that through the centuries have brought it down to us. He is a professional who, despite being considered a “mere theorist” of the discipline, has a clear and decisive mission: to study and transmit the characters of Cultural Heritage, so that civic consciousness becomes community. So, we do not question technological progress, but rather the content, the purpose of communication; in fact, there are excellent art historians and cultural institutions that make excellent use of social media and new technologies.
We wonder if there is still room for the Art Historian and Critic. In all answer, we are convinced YES! Think, for example, of the Caravaggio exhibition at the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica - Palazzo Barberini in Rome, which garnered 240,000 paying visitors after twenty days of its opening to the public. The Lombard painter’s public fortune depends, yes, on his communicative immediacy, but we like to remember how, at least until the 1950s-specifically until the first and iconic exhibition curated by Roberto Longhi in 1951 at Palazzo Reale-he was considered a marginal painter, a rebel, a provincial. Art-historical research starting with Longhi, passing through Ferdinando Bologna, Claudio Strinati, Rossella Vodret, Mina Gregori, Francesca Cappelletti, Maria Cristina Terzaghi, and Thomas Clement Salomon, just to name a few, has been fundamental in building the image we have of the painter today. Without this tireless work of recovery, interpretation and dissemination, the public would not have had the tools to understand the artist’s innovative scope. One loves what one knows; this is also one of the tasks of the Art Historian: to lead the viewer through a more conscious cultural experience, possible only through the studies produced.
Caravaggio is the paradigm of a virtuous process that needs to be activated in our country. If one loves what one knows, the Ministry of Culture has a duty to put knowledge, study, and understanding of our Cultural Heritage back at the center. As a matter of fact, the recognition and study of Cultural Heritage are the foundations of our Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape, in order to Protect, Enhance and Enjoy our Heritage.
The CISDA - Committee of Eligible Art Historians of the public competition announced by the Ministry of Culture for the recruitment of a total contingent of 518 non-managerial staff, therefore calls on the MIC to bring Art History back to the center. By investing in the excellence of public service, introducing those scientific skills in the conduct of the reform of the MIC-now being implemented, enriching its department with an additional 251 units and bringing to exhaustion the list of successful candidates. All this; through a revision of the personnel plan of the Art Historians in force at the Ministry, and to the eventual redistribution of the posts newly available as a result of the numerous renunciations - more than 100 posts of the officials of the different profiles advertised, hired in the past months within the same competition procedure.
A cultural revolution - the one hoped for by us eligible Art Historians, which, strengthened by programmatic foresight, would not only guarantee the preservation of our country’s Cultural Heritage, but would also support the introduction of new meanings, the rediscovery of places and works that are today forgotten. We know that we are in line with the current government, which envisioned projecting Italy into a new Renaissance.
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