On exhibitions, part 1. But is it true that Italy does not have world-class exhibitions?

In recent weeks, the entire Italian exhibition scene has found itself, malgré lui, having to suffer the blows of the crossfire of Venerdì di Repubblica and Il Foglio, which came out, a week apart (on September 14 and 21) with two articles supporting the same basic thesis: specifically, according to Antonella Barina(Venerdì) and Maurizio Crippa(Il Foglio), important appointments such as the major Mantegna and Bellini exhibition, running at the National Gallery in London until January 27 and aimed at analyzing, for the first time in such depth, the close relationship between the two painters and brothers-in-law, would be increasingly rare in Italy. Even, one would think that for Friday the topic would be rather urgent and worrisome, since the article was also cover story of the Sept. 14 issue, which featured on its cover a detail filled with pathos of Giovanni Bellini’s Dead Christ between two angels, usually kept at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin but now on display at the London exhibition.

Barina writes: "One of the most important exhibitions of recent times, with outstanding loans coming in, will open at the National Gallery on Oct. 1, and the installation has begun. Mantegna and Bellini, curated by Caroline Campbell [...]. An exceptional event. A singular short-circuit between two giants of the Italian Quattrocento. Italian, in fact. Why does this unprecedented challenge take place across the Channel rather than in the lands that were once the lands of the Doges and Gonzagas, where the two artists were born and soared? Sure, the bulk of their paintings have long been exiles in Northern Europe. But that is not enough. Behind this London exhibition there is also a massive direction: six years of work (as opposed to the two to three usually needed to organize even major exhibitions); many dozens of specialists engaged for years in meticulous studies of the works, in elaborate and patient negotiations with those who loaned the masterpieces, in restorations, in settlements with insurance companies... And grand directorships require huge funds, enlightened producers (public and private), organizational machines oiled to perfection... So does the courage not to confuse quality and spectacle, scientific value and audience success. The alchemy has often succeeded in Italy as well. Today, however, less than in the past." And from the columns of Il Foglio she is echoed by Crippa, who suggests that the minister of cultural heritage, Alberto Bonisoli, should ask himself “why such a prestigious exhibition, with excellent loans also fromItaly, was organized by a foreign public institution,” and why “Mibac, or some large Italian museum, has long been unable to produce cultural events of the same level.”

Now, for a consistent argument to be made that more important exhibitions are held abroad than in Italy, two basic conditions must be proven (or at least attempted). The first: prove that there are an overwhelming number of good, useful, innovative exhibitions beyond the Alps, supported by sound scientific projects and elaborate research projects. The second: to demonstrate that in Italy, on the contrary, truly noteworthy events are latent. And as a corollary, it would be necessary to take into account the differences between Italy and abroad: Barina and Crippa refer to England, where the most original and important exhibitions are held mainly at large, centralizing museums, as opposed to what happens in Italy, a country where even small provincial museums are able to offer the public events of the highest interest. Moreover, since it would be quite impossible to focus on the entire offerings of Italy and England, perhaps it would be the case to at least make comparisons between the major museums. But surely, basing the comparison between England and Italy on a single example, namely the National Gallery’s Mantegna and Bellini exhibition, is journalistically misleading, ethically questionable, and dialectically idle. More interesting would have been a more comprehensive assessment of the Italian exhibition scene. Especially if, as in the case of Crippa, the minister is invited to ask himself why exhibitions such as Caravage à Rome at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris (one of the many exhibitions on Caravaggio), “take place in Paris and not in the territory under its sovereignty”: perhaps, the journalist of Il Foglio has escaped the fact that just last year a major exhibition on Caravaggio was held in Milan, for the number of works by the great Lombard even greater than that in Paris. And also that arrivals such as those of the “highly coveted ’Magdalene in Ecstasy,’ which, according to insiders, is secretly owned by Milanese collectors,” are anything but rare in Italy, indeed: sometimes they even manage to spark controversy, as happened in Brera last year when the so-called Judith of Toulouse was exhibited.

One of the rooms of the monographic exhibition on Carlo Bononi in Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, in 2017. Ph. Credit Dino Buffagni

It is then true that, on the whole, the offer in Italy is not so exciting and, as Giovanni Agosti well suggests to readers in the same issue of Friday, it would be appropriate to let go of Frida Kahlo and company, and “dare more.” However, to think that going for exhibitions in Italy means only going to visit pre-packaged events that leverage the usual catchy names (from Frida Kahlo to Modigliani, from Picasso to Andy Warhol), is also to do a disservice to all those institutions that, every year, present research exhibitions of absolute depth. It would be interesting to know whether those who claim that excellent exhibitions are not held in Italy have gone, just to give a few examples, to Umbria to visit the exhibition on the fourteenth century in Spoleto and its surroundings, an exhibition born from the in-depth research of a very talented art historian (Alessandro Delpriori) who has devoted years of study to the subject, or to Val d’Orcia for the wonderful exhibition on the sixteenth century in Siena that also introduced some interesting discoveries, or in Milan at the Gallerie d’Italia in Piazza Scala to visit the exhibition that, starting with seventeenth-century collecting, investigated the ramifications of Caravaggism in Naples and Genoa, or again in Rome for a very useful exhibition, still focused on collecting, that reconstructed, among other situations, also the history of the origins of tutelage in Italy, or to take a look at the first monographic exhibitions of Carlo Bononi, in Ferrara, and of Genovesino, in Cremona. All very valid research exhibitions. And if objections are raised about the internationalappeal of the list just last (which, to be clear, is limited to the last calendar year), it will be useful to remember that other exhibitions of exceptional importance, such as the much-discussed exhibition on Italian art between 1918 and 1943 in Milan, such as the one on the Florentine Cinquecento, or such as the extraordinary first monograph on Ambrogio Lorenzetti in Siena, have had a resonance that is far from negligible even outside Italian borders. And, again, if it is objected that in our country, research exhibitions attract fewer visitors than exhibitions that focus entirely on big names, it will be possible to respond by stating that it works the same way in the United Kingdom: in 2017, the three most visited exhibitions across the Channel were, in strict order, the solo exhibition of David Hockney (who is little known to the general public in our country, but who is a superstar there), the exhibition on Pink Floyd, and the one on abstract expressionists (Jackson Pollock and company). The attraction to blockbuster exhibitions is not unique to our country: and this attraction, however, is answered by a school capable of doing sound image education and by good and proper popularization. At the political level, however, virtuous models should be found. “In Ferrara,” Agosti further points out, “an enlightened director such as Maria Luisa Pacelli uses popular occasions to pay for the faculty to ensure in-depth insights into lesser-known moments of the local figurative tradition.” The example is that of the Palazzo dei Diamanti.

It is certainly no mystery that the number of research exhibitions correlates with the ability and possibility of funding them. Also in last September 14’s Venerdì, Tomaso Montanari, who points out that “there are no, if not rarely (and if anything always in co-production with foreign museums), really important exhibitions in Italy” (and yet then two weeks later, in the same newspaper, he rightly praises the monographic exhibition on Anton Maria Maragliano being prepared in Genoa: the panorama, after all, is not so bleak), identifies the causes of the decadence of the Italian exhibition offer in the “destructive absence of investment in heritage.” It is on the issue of economic resources that the minister should be urged, rather than on the ability to put on exhibitions of depth (since Italian institutions are perfectly capable of doing so): the most conspicuous difference between Italy and England probably lies in the fact that London exhibitions manage to attract significant funding from private individuals. The Mantegna and Bellini exhibition is supported by three foundations as main sponsors, by a dozen others who have made additional contributions, and by others who, the exhibition colophon specifies, “wished to remain anonymous.” The Ambrogio Lorenzetti exhibition in Siena relied on one main sponsor and three technical sponsors. This is the biggest gap that divides us from the Anglo-Saxon world. And if there are energies to be expended, it is necessary, if anything, to channel them wisely, that is, to attract private investment, to improve the efficiency of public investment, to develop effective models, and to incentivize education.

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