Sgarbi on Palazzo dei Diamanti: no programming? Lie. And the new director will be Giovanni Sassu

In a lengthy note sent to the press, Vittorio Sgarbi responds to the three former culture aldermen of Ferrara (Alberto Ronchi, Francesco Ruvinetti, Massimo Maisto) who in recent days had accused him of damaging the image of Palazzo dei Diamanti (for his management of the exhibition center) and had asked the mayor of the Emilian city to revoke his appointment. Sgarbi’s reply follows.

"Come to think of it, there is a comical aspect to the appeal to Mayor Fabbri to restrain me and give the presidency of Ferrara Arte to himself. Let’s go in order. If the mayor makes the appointments of the presidents and directors of the Foundations, it is because he is exercising a prerogative indicated by the Statute, which explicitly presupposes that the function of president can be assumed by him or by a personality indicated by him. As was the case. The statute does not provide that the councilor be the deputy mayor. And, since these are technical functions, it is respectful and civilized not only for the mayor to appoint someone other than himself, but to seek him out and identify him from among competent people.

This has happened, overcoming the obvious conflict of interest of the previous mayor who appointed himself. Even more paradoxical is that to ask for the mayor to reassume the presidency of Ferrara Arte is a gentleman who was not mayor but councilor for culture, and who was sole director of Ferrara Arte Spa from 1996 to 2009. Ten years, without being either mayor or alderman (for three years, from ’96 to ’99, he had tasted conflict as well): such, subtitled, Francesco Ruvinetti, an obscure party official whose trail had been lost. Also trusting in the rehabilitation of conflict of interest is such other Massimo Maisto, whose thoughts are unknown but whose all-political, strictly provincial career in the party that rewarded him. No moans can be heard beyond Copparo. The third proponent lurks in the mists of Codigoro. All three are proponents of a Ferrara model of which they cite as the latest outcome the facile Giuseppe de Nittis exhibition, which consists of transporting two-thirds of paintings from the museum in Barletta in exchange for Boldini paintings from the Civic Museums of Ferrara, with the difference, that not counting fixed expenses, and salaries for the curators, the De Nittis exhibition cost 750 thousand euros, involving a 13 euro ticket, while the symmetrical Boldini one in Barletta cost only 75 thousand euros (one-tenth). It is called a wasteful pattern for useless exhibitions, without research, taken away from competent specialists, on the model inaugurated, after Franco Farina’s adventurous period, by official Andrea Buzzoni.

The three plaintiffs, in addition to the paradoxical result of retrospectively disavowing the long-lived Ruvinetti (who was never mayor), claiming the role of president of Ferrara Arte to the mayor, also call for the appointment of a director, pointing to the precedents from the 1960s to the present, Farina, Buzzoni and Pacelli (three in 60 years). But let’s see how: Franco Farina, an elementary school teacher, did not have the qualifications to be director, and he was by grace received. He himself declared, ’the merit of the municipal administration was to let me do it.’ Andrea Buzzoni, son of the first communist mayor of Ferrara, was temporarily director, then elevated to director of the cultural activities sector. Maria Luisa Pacelli, who describes herself in her resume as ’cultural officer’ and ’Head of the Organizational Position Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries,’ has never been director. On April 1, 2001, she was given a ’contract of continuous coordinated collaboration related to the activity of curator exhibitions and museums of the Cultural Activities sector of the Municipality of Ferrara’. This contract, linked to the expiration of the current mayor’s electoral term, was renewed for her, with different formulas, until January 31, 2010. From December 27, 2010 she was hired on a permanent basis, as a cultural officer category Dr3.

Thus, she has never been director, although in 2006 she is listed as co-director of the Diamond Palace, alongside the artistic director of Ferrara Arte, of undefined identification. It is possible that she refers, without having competed, to a position established by manager Buzzoni. So, three anomalous directors who are credited with the ’research, quality and originality’ of the exhibitions proposed in Ferrara, which have always had external curators, being not produced in house, but made in collaboration with other museums.

In ignorance of the documents, the mayor and the president of Ferrara Arte are attributed with the decapitation of the structure, which instead remained intact by not confirming as director Maria Luisa Pacelli, who never was.

Completely arbitrary, then, is the presumption that no new appointment is planned. And is it up to the mayor or the president of Ferrara Arte? Keeping us in the state of indefiniteness, it should be the president who finally indicates a director in place of the one who was not there. As it stands, by competition, Ethel Guidi is the winner, with the title not of director but of ’director of the Castello Estense, Museums of Sacred and Historical Scientific Art service’ (ungrammatical name, the closest to that of Andrea Buzzoni); and loser, in third place, Maria Luisa Pacelli. It is my intention, with equal titles, to appoint Giovanni Sassu as acting director. In this bureaucratic chaos, the invocation of the three plaintiffs appears, despite their many years of political militancy in various administrative roles, rather confusing and tending to be defamatory. Just as it does not correspond to the truth, and is indeed pure invention, that I used Palazzo dei Diamanti in the campaign for the regional elections. Visions. Never even entered: sum mental confusion. Words in the wild.

Absolute lie is that there is no planning. It is well known that Palazzo Massari is closed, and Palazzo dei Diamanti soon will be. All resources have been absorbed by De Nittis. The Banksy exhibition was a must-see opportunity and certainly more original than the precooked and very expensive exhibition on de Nittis. The cost to the municipality is only 40,000 euros, the curation by Gianluca Marziani, the production by Pietro Folena. Banksy is an exhibition in the Farina style to bring Ferrara back to the center and not leave it to the twilight sleeps of De Nittis, Barletta model. The risk of being containers does not exist, since the exhibition is guaranteed works never before exhibited, but it would be the same risk taken and practiced with the Buzzoni-Pacelli duo’s exhibitions shared with New Heaven, Lyon, Madrid, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, and Rome. Conversely, the new line of FerraraArte is the proposal of Ferrara artists in the Castello Estense, starting with Gaetano Previati, to restore honor to Giovanni Battista Crema to Arrigo Minerbi, Roberto Melli, to Felicità Frai, to Mimì Quilici Buzzacchi, to a new De Chirico. And consideration is being given to how to transfer the activities of the Palazzo dei Diamanti to another important palace. Ferrara Arte has set the reopening of Palazzo Schifanoia on March 12, returning the Salone dei mesi to visitors, with the original production exhibition ’Gli Ori degli Estensi.’ Programming includes in Castello Estense the exhibition on Sculpture of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

Vittorio Sgarbi"

Sgarbi on Palazzo dei Diamanti: no programming? Lie. And the new director will be Giovanni Sassu

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