... and they dared to call it an exhibition. But blame must be sought elsewhere

In Carrara, the 2014 edition of Marble Weeks began a few days ago, and in yet another highly original way, there was an exhibition on the plaster casts of theAcademy of Fine Arts. The third in the last four years-I’m just amazed that last year they skipped it. And still. The exhibition, with the lofty title L’Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara e il suo patrimonio(The Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara and its heritage), was announced in exalted tones: “the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara showcases itself through the new arrangement of its heritage: marble works, plaster works and paintings, arranged in the grand staircase, the halls, the cloister, the former Anatomical Theater and the corridors, are thus returned to public view according to a philological criterion.” In short, to translate: this is nothing more than the temporary opening to the public of the work in progress (for such it seems) of what should be a kind of museum itinerary that from temporary should, in a nebulous and unknown future, become permanent.

However, the first question is: according to the philology, should the sculptures be displayed on top of wooden pallets, as if they were fruit and vegetable crates from Carrefour, or can they take advantage of slightly more decent bases? But that aside: whoever called this... initiative (I can’t find any other term) an “exhibition” is really a daredevil. Or he is simply someone who has not thought about the fact that there is also someone in Carrara who sees several exhibitions (yes, those that can be called “exhibitions”) a year, all over Italy and even abroad. And the comparison can only be merciless.

To begin with, the minimum requirement for an exhibition to be considered as such is to have a title. And here, the Carrara Academy’s initiative responds in a positive way. The problem is that neither in the city, nor in the Academy, is there a trace of a shred of a sign or illustrative panel giving directions, not saying how to get to the Academy (because we have long since surrendered to the fact that local administrations have not the slightest interest or desire to attract visitors from outside Carrara), but even just the fact that there is an exhibition going on these days, and until September. But that’s not all: when you arrive at the Academy, there is no panel that tells you where you should start your visit. Thus, the exhibition automatically excludes different categories of visitors: those who have never been to the Academy, the inexperienced, and those who visit the rooms without a guide.

I decide to start my visit from the upper floor, and I notice that there is actually some explanation: it is the descriptions of the rooms with lists of works (without even a hint of graphic design, even minimalist: They look like school circulars), printed on A4 sheets taped to the walls (who knows if they come from the printer of some Academy employee who took his work home), or to plywood panels resting on top of the floor, most uncomfortable for any kind of reading but most useful for attacking the safety of visitors’ shins. I make to enter one of the halls, realize it is closed: so I ask the first employee I run into if it is possible to see one of the exhibition halls ... during exhibition hours, “you know how it is.” I think it should be quite usual to expect to find the halls open during exhibition hours. In Carrara this does not happen. The lady calls another employee, who arrives with a set of keys, shows me the room, waits until I have left, and locks up again. “An interactive exhibition,” I think, meaning you have to interact with the employees to get them to open the rooms.

In the next rooms, which I visit trying to disturb as little as possible the staff who work in the rooms (they are mostly administrative staff), I notice other nice details. The poor lighting in certain rooms, for example. Or the panels that are mostly hung outside the rooms and not inside, and especially the paintings and sculptures hanging in the various rooms have no tags to identify them. For a person who is not very knowledgeable about art, it is not the easiest feat to remember, once he enters the hall, that in there he will find, among others, a painting by Honorius Marinari depicting a Saint Catherine of Alexandria (especially if he has to remember a dozen other works). And then the dust present just about everywhere, and the usual wooden pallets that serve as bases for the sculptures.

I decide that I have had enough and head for the library where an exhibition of part of the Academy’s library and archival holdings has been set up and where, for the occasion, drawings and engravings by some important artists are also on display: Bertel Thorvaldsen, John Flaxman (of whom there is also a small but significant head donated by the artist to the Academy), Giovanni Antonio Cybei, Raffaello Morghen, Frédéric Adolphe Yvon and several others. This exhibition is for all intents and purposes an exhibition. Even still, it is the potentially least interesting part for a non-specialist audience. Oh, by the way: the library was also closed, and I had to ask the secretary to let me open it. Obviously putting me in line behind the Academy students who had to ask questions about their bureaucratic-administrative problems.

However, to say that the set-up is at least “artisanal” would be to do the artisans a disservice. To display the drawings and engravings, large wooden panels were chosen on which a coat of white paint appears to have been given. And so far that might be fine, too, were it not for the fact that these panels appear quite obviously recycled from other endeavors: dirty beyond belief (the black-on-white rubbing is not the hardest to distinguish), with marks from a piece of tape peeled off in ages past, nails and tacks still planted, marks from other nails removed, and so on. Not to mention the way the drawings and carvings were hung. On top of the white panels were attached squares of blue bristol board, and the engravings found their place on the bristol. Protecting them are clear plastic veils. The whole thing held up by office clips that hold up the contraption and in turn are supported by thumbtacks threaded through the metal ring. Stuff that may perhaps be fine for a market stall selling twenty-euro prints, but not for an Academy of Fine Arts with a centuries-old history that exhibits, for example, the design for the equestrian monument to Francesco III d’Este by Giovanni Antonio Cybei, whose sketch can also be found in the exhibition (assuming one is lucky enough to find someone to open the management room). Not to mention the display cases, closed with transparent packing tape. Hard to believe everything I have said so far? Here are some pictures:

What to say, after visiting this “exhibition” (let’s call it that for convenience)? Meanwhile, that the Academy should find its own identity. Museum and offices cannot coexist, in the sense that it is neither nice nor comfortable to visit rooms used as offices for staff. On the contrary: it is rather embarrassing for the visitor to look at paintings under which you find a desk with an employee working. And then ... the only thing you get to think at the end of the visit is this, “it’s a shame.” It’s a shame because the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara has a first-rate artistic and documentary heritage, and this haphazardly arranged initiative doesn’t really do it justice; on the contrary: it debases and humiliates it. It is a pity because the Academy could attract visitors from outside Carrara and could show the Carrara people themselves, awakening their minds and consciences, a forgotten city: that of art, that of the works of the great masters of the past who passed through these areas, that of culture. This is a pity because the curators are very valid professionals (moreover, of one of them, Linda Pisani, I was also a student at the University of Pisa, and I have good memories of her course), capable of curating high-level initiatives (and of a high level is, in fact, the exhibition of the documentary heritage of the Academy, the one set up in the library): again, the “exhibition” does not do justice to their professionalism.

This happens, however, when you are forced to work in economic straits: because if you can’t even afford to hang name tags near the works, it means you are working in economic straits. You don’t need to know that the Academy doesn’t have good times to realize this: you just have to come in and see the “exhibition.” And the curators, for this, are not to blame: they basically do what they can. The faults, then, are upstream: they must be sought in a city that is disinterested in itself and does not invest in its excellence. In a city that, we see every day, is hostage to dastardly political decisions, and to a business community that is destroying the city’s environment and economy (one of the most disrupted in north-central Italy), the preconditions for high-level cultural initiatives are probably lacking. And by “high-level cultural initiatives,” I am certainly not referring to Marble Weeks, the event with which the quarry owners (because, although quarries should be everyone’s heritage, in fact the owners are others) celebrate their work. Suffice it to say that in the signs indicating the works, the name of the quarry owners who supplied the marble appears before that of the artists. Sort of like if next to the most famous work in the Accademia Gallery in Florence we find a sign that reads,"DAVID - Fantiscritti Marble Quarry - Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti.“ And this gives Marble Weeks a far more advertising and self-referential character than a cultural one. The Academy’s ”exhibition" was also organized as part of Marble Weeks. But those who come to Carrara will realize that the exhibits that advertise whoever is supplying the marbles are pulled out to a high gloss and accompanied by signs complete with graphics, web addresses and social logos. Inside the Academy, dust and A4 sheets. It is obvious: What interest would quarry owners have in investing in the Academy? What interest would they have in taking on an exhibition that would produce culture, which is what Carrara surely does not need to create a strong civic consciousness? Certainly, one leaves the Academy with questions, especially when one compares what is seen inside with what is seen outside for Marble Weeks. And one wonders, above all, how much longer this disinterest of Carrara in culture will last.

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.