Luca Bizzarri at the Doge's Palace: let's avoid screeching and give him the benefit of the doubt

They say that the national sport of Liguria is grumbling: continuous, complaining grumbling, in these parts, is an ingrained habit, a specific character trait, and by now even a quirk, if you will. Yesterday, the appointment of Luca Bizzarri as the new president of Genoa ’s Palazzo Ducale Foundation was enough to extend this all-Ligurian typicality to the whole of Italy. We repeat it, in case anyone missed any passage: Luca Bizzarri, the comedian actor of the duo Luca and Paolo, known to most for hosting successful programs such as “Le Iene” or “Colorado,” has joined, by municipal appointment, the board of directors of the Foundation that manages a cultural institution with about six hundred thousand visitors a year. He has been nominated for the role of president: all that is missing is ratification by the board of directors, but that is a matter of formality. The news was enough to set off endless controversy, centered for the most part on one assumption: Luca Bizzarri has no expertise in art, no art-historical training, and no specific sector knowledge. With all the typical ordinance corollaries that emerge whenever a person from a different background finds himself in management roles in a cultural institution or museum: “there is no work for art history graduates but for others there is,” “what did we study to do,” “only recommended people get ahead,” and so on. As if, said ironically, everyone who complains aspires to the presidency of the Ducal Palace. But that is not the point.

Luca Bizzarri. Photo Credit.

Of course: we would be speaking the falsehood if we claimed that Luca Bizzarri’s appointment does not raise any perplexity in us and that we would not have preferred a less “televised” and, above all, more experienced profile. But certainly not because the aforementioned lacks expertise in art history. The roles, from the Foundation’s bylaws, appear clear and distinct. The President, the Foundation’s legal representative, “exercises all powers of initiative necessary for the proper functioning of the Foundation,” “convenes and presides over meetings of the Board of Directors with voting rights, setting the agenda,” and “convenes and presides over the Assembly of Participants and Supporters without voting rights.” Those who complain of art-historical shortcomings on Luca Bizzarri’s part can breathe a sigh of relief: it is not up to the President to take care of scientific activity, for which there is a director who, again according to the bylaws, “must have specific and proven experience in management in the cultural sphere,” and a scientific committee composed of “members chosen and appointed by the Board of Directors upon the President’s proposal from among particularly qualified personalities of recognized prestige in the cultural sphere.” This means that to compose the scientific committee of Palazzo Ducale we will never see Jerry Calà, the puppet Uan, Jimmy the Phenomenon and Pino La Lavatrice: there will continue to be personalities with solid skills. The problems, the real ones, are others.

Luca Bizzarri’s undoubtedly appears to be a marketing-oriented appointment. It seems that the Ducal Palace needs an image restoration after the affair of the alleged forgeries at the Modigliani exhibition. An affair that we do not want to get into, except expressing solidarity with the Foundation and those who worked on the organization of the exhibition: this, however, does not exempt us from continuing to consider that exhibition, as well as others that preceded it, a poor quality operation. And of this we, on our pages, were already speaking in unsuspected times. Because one thing appears in its palpable clarity: beyond the many events of great interest (mostly small ones, such as IndiviDuality, the exhibition on Gilberto Govi, the one of Adriano Silingardi’s photographs, or the always punctual cycles of lectures), in recent times, the flagship exhibitions at Palazzo Ducale have resolved themselves into easy commercial operations that have brought to Genoa the usual cartloads of Impressionists, Fride Kahlo, assorted Cartier-Bressons that have done nothing but feed the cult of the fetish with operations of dubious quality, to say the least. Where were the purists who today cry scandal over the appointment of Luca Bizzarri when the walls of the piano nobile were plastered with phrases Modigliani never uttered, when monstrous and arrogant bimbos were installed in the Doge’s Chapel to cover Giovanni Battista Carlone’s frescoes, when Goldin, under the pretext of the “Gauguin trip,” staged a disjointed potpourri attributable more to the category of pure entertainment than to that of cultural event? In other words: where were the good souls when it came to criticism on the merits, when it was necessary to fuel the ever-recent debate on the relationship between major events and host cities? Many, probably, were too busy magnifying the “great beauty” of such operations.

So, rather than ranting against Luca Bizzarri’s lack of competence, let us rather ask ourselves what the purpose of this appointment is, and let us try to understand whether Luca Bizzarri possesses the management skills required to suggest the directions of an institution that is one of the symbols of Genoa’s cultural life, if not, for many, the main symbol. Let us ask ourselves whether Bizzarri’s appointment will guarantee a new course, let us try to reason out what the real needs are for a Ducal Palace that has long gone down the road of easy box-office exhibition, let us ask ourselves whether Bizzarri’s is a name that will serve only to attract investment, or whether it will enable us to bring to the Ducal Palace a public that would otherwise never set foot inside an exhibition space, and let us also ask ourselves whether his appointment does not clash so much with the prestige of the institute: beyond his TV appearances, Luca Bizzarri has a long theatrical militancy to his credit, and Palazzo Ducale hosts not only exhibitions but also film festivals, ateliers and readings dedicated to children and families, science workshops, literary and cultural meetings, reviews of history, religion, philosophy, sociology, poetry and theater festivals. To think that the activity of the Ducal Palace corresponds exclusively to the exhibition of Frida Kahlo or the Impressionists is drastically reductive, as is to think that the president should have an educational background behind him that relates only to art (he would not, in any case, have the skills to deal with many of the other activities that take place within the palace’s walls).

Let us therefore give the benefit of the doubt to a person who will have a management role. Certainly an unprecedented role, and so harboring perplexity is almost a must. But from his first statements, Luca Bizzarri has let his enthusiasm and desire to get involved shine through, and he certainly cannot be blamed for not loving his city. As the editorial staff of Windows on Art, we wish Luca Bizzarri the best of luck in his work, as he is awaiting a task that is anything but easy. We will, as always, be attentive and critical.

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