Will Marino Marini's works leave Pistoia? Council of State agrees with the foundation

In the future, the works of Marino Marini (Pistoia, 1901 - Viareggio, 1980) kept at the Palazzo del Tau in his hometown of Pistoia may leave their home. In fact, the intricate issue concerning Marino Marini’s Pistoia works, which was opposed on one side by the Marino Marini Foundation and on the other by the Municipality of Pistoia and the Region of Tuscany, ended yesterday, with the final victory of the foundation, with a ruling of the Council of State published precisely on May 30.

We are talking about the works that Marini, by his own will, had destined for his hometown. At the Marino Marini Museum in Florence , however, are the works that the artist donated to the City of Florence. The result is that today Marini’s legacy is represented by two museums, one in Pistoia and one in Florence: in Pistoia there are plaster casts, videos, drawings, paintings, sculptures, and documents, while in Florence mainly sculptures. It was in 1983, at the behest of Mercedes Pedrazzini, the artist’s wife, that the Foundation bearing the name of the great artist was established: it was then decided to exhibit the Pistoia works precisely in Palazzo del Tau.

The Foundation, starting in 2019, seeks to move part of the works to Florence in order to create two distinct poles of the museum dedicated to Marino Marini: in the Tuscan capital, the nucleus would be functional in presenting Marini’s work above all from an artistic point of view, while in Pistoia it would remain a path not devoid of works but with a more distinctly documentary slant. However, the idea of moving part of the works from Pistoia to Florence was not liked, and both the Municipality, the Region of Tuscany, and the Ministry of Culture moved against the Foundation: on December 3, 2019, the ministry therefore placed a constraint of relevance between Marino Marini’s works and the place where they are exhibited, thus preventing the move. “Pistoia’s institutions and Marini’s widow, Mercedes Pedrazzini,” reads the Superintendent’s deed, “acted jointly to establish, in 1983, the current Marino Marini Museum through the cession in use of the former Tau Convent, specially purchased and restored by the City of Pistoia.” There have also been numerous demonstrations by Pistoiese residents to ask the Foundation not to take the works away from the city.

Initially, the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) had ruled in favor of the Ministry, but the Council of State overturned the administrative court’s ruling, annulling the appurtenant attachment of Marino Marini’s works to Pistoia’s Palazzo del Tau.

“Within the framework of today’s institutional pluralism, despite being a private entity, the foundation,” the ruling reads, “pursues public purposes autonomously. The controversial and disputable constraint of cultural pertinence imposed, ex cathedra, by the contested cultural decree [...] did not take into any consideration the factual situation that had reasonably induced the foundation to consider the possibility of allocating the works kept in Pistoia to another location, given the proclaimed unsuitability of the Palace and former Church of Tau for the enjoyment of them.”

Therefore, the Council of State ruled in favor of the Foundation, finding well-founded the appeal of a “nonprofit social formation established - within the framework of the principle of subsidiarity - to satisfy primary public interests pertaining to the regime of works of art of cultural interest [...] Nature, role and functions of the entity that, indeed, the proceeding administration has not sufficiently considered.”

Prompt is the response of Mayor Alessandro Tomasi, who still hopes that the works will not leave and, if Palazzo del Tau is no longer suitable, proposes that the Foundation find a home in the city for Marino Marini’s works . “Now it is time for the Foundation to say what it wants to do, we are ready to cooperate as we have already said,” the first citizen said. “The municipality-not as a result of the ruling but for months now-has proposed the Convent of San Lorenzo precisely to enhance the master’s work in Pistoia. The Council of State itself says it is desirable to have a public-private agreement that, in view of the factual reality, aims to fully preserve and enhance his works. And again, it is stressed ’the joint action of the mayor and the organs of the Foundation to place the Master’s works in a new museum structure identified in the church and convent of San Lorenzo.’ It goes back, therefore, to the commitment made at the Prefecture meeting on September 27 on the possibility of identifying a museum structure, in our city, capable of housing Marini’s works through an enhancement project. A structure that the City has already offered and that is included within a neighborhood, that of San Lorenzo, on which we are investing 20 million euros. The conditions to proceed in this direction are all there. Only one is missing: the will of the Foundation. As mayor, I reiterate my full willingness to offer, for the enhancement of the Maestro’s work, one of the most beautiful exhibition sites in the area, on which we are about to intervene. In the event that, as a consequence of this ruling, the Foundation wanted instead to deprive our city of the Maestro’s works-a hypothesis that the Foundation itself, in 2019, said was not in its own interest, and which I still want to hope is so-it is clear that this would be a prospect considered unacceptable. Now is the time for clarity and collaboration.”

Image: the Marino Marini Museum in Pistoia

Will Marino Marini's works leave Pistoia? Council of State agrees with the foundation

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