CGIL denounces "repressive climate" at GNAM in Rome. What's going on?

What is happening at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, where unions have gone so far as to even denounce a repressive climate for workers? It all began a few days ago, when the Fp Cgil of Rome and Lazio published a note expressing its opposition to the event that was to be held on October 3: the presentation of the book Perché l’Italia è di destra. Against the Lies of the Left by Italo Bocchino, in the presence of Senate President Ignazio La Russa. According to the Fp CGIL, it would be a book “with clear propagandistic and provocative connotations,” as they wrote in the note, so the presentation of this volume would have been unsuitable for a museum like the GNAM in Rome. “Museums,” the union added, “are a common good for the whole community and for this reason they should not host politically motivated initiatives, even if disguised as cultural activities as the presentation of a book can be, risking being subjected to a political connotation that is totally unrelated to the purposes of cultural institutions.”

The Fp CGIL also let it be known that the Gallery’s staff had expressed their disagreement with the event to the director, Renata Cristina Mazzantini, asking her to cancel the event. The event, in fact, was eventually held, with a further polemical aftermath, since President La Russa suggested, not without a little taste for provocation, that the book should be “adopted” in schools, since it could be “a drop of water against the lies that the left tells children at school.” Moreover, the minister of education, Giuseppe Valditara, was present in the room.

All over? Not by a long shot: just on October 3, the day of the book presentation, still the Fp CGIL published another note to let it be known that director Mazzantini "sent to the Ministry of Culture and to unspecified ’competent authorities’ the’list of the workers who have expressed, by writing a letter, their disagreement with the presentation of the book Perché l’Italia è di destra - Contro le bugie della sinistra’ by Italo Bocchino in the presence of the author and the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, on the premises of the Gallery.“ For the union, this is ”an unprecedented and dangerous decision because it brings out a repressive climate of all forms of dissent and freedom of expression that should not find legitimacy in a public institution.“ The Fp CGIL concluded its note by reiterating that ”even the Museum’s statute in Article 2 specifies that exhibitions, conferences, events, initiatives, educational and popular activities, even if carried out in collaboration with third parties, must concern the areas of competence of the Museum itself, and among these is not propaganda in support of a political line-up.“ Finally, the union has stigmatized ”the behavior of the Director who, instead of initiating a dialogue with her employees and their representatives, considered reporting the names of ’dissident’ workers to third-party authorities."

On this fact, the opposition now announces its willingness to submit questions to Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli. This was said by Cecilia D’Elia, PD group leader in the Senate Culture Committee: “We are submitting a question to the Minister of Culture so that he can explain what happened at the National Gallery of Modern Art, where workers were reported to the Ministry and other authorities for expressing opposition to the use of a space in the Gallery, a public institution, for the presentation of Italo Bocchino’s latest book, contesting the political and partisan nature of the initiative. We think it is necessary to understand whether any conduct detrimental to the freedom of opinion of workers and workers has been put in place.”

Along the same lines for Elisabetta Piccolotti of Avs, deputy of the Culture Commission: “It is an unprecedented act of unprecedented and unprecedented seriousness the reporting, by the head of the National Gallery of Modern Art Renata Cristina Mazzantini, of some employees guilty of contesting the presentation of Italo Bocchino’s book that took place yesterday in the museum. We will submit on what happened to the detriment of the employees of the Gallery a question to the Minister of Culture Giuli. The government will have to answer for it in the parliamentary halls. The right-wing appointees to the directorates of cultural institutions compete to see who is most zealous in pleasing the government, even to the detriment of their workers. The purported cultural hegemony of the right is nothing but repression and censorship.” So we will see how the minister will respond.

Image: GNAM, the Hall of Hercules. Photo: National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art.

CGIL denounces "repressive climate" at GNAM in Rome. What's going on?

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