"Museum used for party initiatives". Resignation en bloc at GNAM's scientific committee.

En bloc resignation of the scientific committee of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome: three out of four members have in fact bid farewell to the committee after the affair of the presentation of Italo Bocchino’s book and the ensuing polemical aftermath, with the CGIL denouncing the “repressive climate” established at GNAM after the director, Renata Cristina Mazzantini, reportedly collected the names of those who expressed their dissent against the event and sent the list to unspecified third-party authorities.

Resigning were Federica Muzzarelli (full professor of History of Contemporary Art at the University of Bologna), Augusto Roca (full professor of History of Architecture at the Sapienza University of Rome) and Stefania Zuliani (full professor of History of Art Criticism at the University of Salerno). This is the motivation: “In the light of the cultural policy recently adopted by the National Gallery of Modern Art, the lines of which have not been defined through a serene discussion with the Scientific Committee, which, as provided for in Article 6 of the statute, is called upon to perform ’an advisory function on matters of a technical-scientific nature in matters within the competence of the Gallery,’ we resign from the Museum’s Scientific Committee. This decision has also matured in view of the latest events following the presentation of the book by the director of the ’Century of Italy’ held last October 3 in the Gallery in the presence of Senate President Ignazio La Russa. An institutional venue, and therefore everyone’s, was used for an event of an eminently partisan nature, without adequate prior discussion.”

Italo Bocchino disagrees and speaks of “ideological and political racism” because, he said, “the publishing house that organized the event, Solferino, uses to present all its books there. In the past, books by Floris, Di Bella and Sergio Rizzo, who are well-known protagonists of anti-government propaganda in Italy, were presented there and no one batted an eye. The moment the same publishing house presents the book instead that they call pro-government propaganda, it triggers ideological and political racism whereby I would be a second-class citizen, a child of a lesser god. So I do not have the same right as Sergio Rizzo, who has the right to write a book against Meloni and present it at Gnam. I don’t have the same right to the contrary. So I think they are people who are unaccustomed to the study of the Constitution and who are simply trying to make a political fuss for their own interests of cultural circuits to which they belong.”

From the opposition side came the voice of Irene Manzi, head of the PD group in the culture committee at the Chamber, who said, “What happened on the occasion of the presentation of Italo Bocchino’s book at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, resulting in the resignation of three authoritative members of the Scientific Committee, is very serious and is yet another demonstration of inadequate and divisive management of our cultural heritage by the government. We are facing an instrumental use of cultural institutions, which should remain spaces of free and pluralistic confrontation, far from any political interference. The resignation of three out of four members of the scientific committee of the National Gallery cannot remain in silence, Giuli clarify in parliament.”

Image: the GNAM. Photo: Finestre Sull’Arte

"Museum used for party initiatives". Resignation en bloc at GNAM's scientific committee.

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