Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti not in danger: counterpetition to support addition work

In recent days, art critic and television personality Vittorio Sgarbi had launched a petition against work on the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara: in fact, a glass and steel structure will be added to the palace’s garden, which, according to Sgarbi, will produce an inappropriate enlargement of the building. The Municipality of Ferrara, on the other hand, explained that it will be a completely reversible pavilion that will not touch the building, and let it be known that some of the names of the signatories would in fact only be alleged because, when reached by the mayor and alderman, they would claim not to know about Sgarbi’s initiative.

Now, one of the parties involved in the design of the new structure, the Roman firm Labics, launches a counter-petition, again on Change.org, in which it states that, contrary to the claims of others, Palazzo dei Diamanti is not in danger and that, if anything, “a senseless smear campaign is underway, devoid of foundation, created only to discredit a project, a competition, a public administration.” The winning project, the petition reads, “is a completely transparent and reversible light structure that is distanced from the existing building, restoring transparency and continuity of the view of the garden from the main courtyard of the building,” and there would be no objective data to criticize or attack the project.

Sgarbi’s “no,” seen as a “rearguard petition” aimed at blocking an initiative that “on the contrary would improve a museum site whose exhibitions are appreciated all over the world,” is challenged on three grounds: the first is respect for the people who prepared and announced the competition, as well as for the contestants and the committee that evaluated them; the second iseducation understood as a mode of interlocution (“in a civilized country one dialogues and compares different points of view”); and the third is culture as “recognition of modernity,” an “inalienable condition of our very existence.” Labics’ appeal, launched to the Minister of Cultural Heritage, has so far collected more than 1,500 signatures, slightly more than those that Sgarbi’s petition gathered instead.

Pictured is a rendering of the project for Palazzo dei Diamanti.

Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti not in danger: counterpetition to support addition work

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