Milan, the candidate of the sovereignist right wants to abolish Art Week: useless and wasteful

Pointless and wasteful: this is how the sovereignist right’s mayoral candidate in Milan, Luca Bernardo, has defined Art Week, the schedule of art events held every year in the Lombard capital, in conjunction with the Miart fair, one of the leading contemporary art exhibition markets on the international scene. Bernardo, in his program, attacks culture but not only. “Cinema week, food week, art week, photo week: useless and wasteful,” says the candidate. “Only fashion and design weeks work because they originate from two solid institutions like the Chamber of Fashion and the Furniture Fair.” Art Week should therefore be cancelled according to Bernardo.

An ill-considered attack, however, because Bernardo probably does not know that Art Week is entirely financed by private resources, offered by the event’s sponsor, Banca Generali, which moreover has supported it for years. But even if it were public resources, investing in culture is still a good practice. And Art Week is an event that generates cultural, social and even economic returns.

Responding to the right-wing candidate is the Milan City Councilor for Culture, Filippo Del Corno, who entrusts his words to Facebook: “It would be enough to have a little knowledge of reality and the ability to study dossiers to understand how unfounded these reasons are. Milano Art Week does not represent any expense for the City of Milan because the initiative has been supported for several years by an important private entity, and it is realized thanks to the industrious competition of the many city institutions, public and private, that build its program. On the alleged uselessness, I would advise the candidate to address directly the top management of Fiera Milano, the community of art galleries, artists and cultural operators in the city, the businesses active in the field of catering, hotel reception, private transportation and hospitality services, to measure the exponential growth in reputation and attractiveness that the alliance between Art Week and the city’s most important international art fair, miart, has been able to achieve in recent years in the sole public and collective interest of Milan. It is indeed regrettable that the sovereignist candidate addresses such important issues for the present and future of Milan with such superficiality and unpreparedness; there remains the consolation of finding how poor his aim is in identifying the targets he intends to hit to try to dismantle Milan’s cultural system.”

In short, perhaps Bernardo should have informed himself better....

Milan, the candidate of the sovereignist right wants to abolish Art Week: useless and wasteful

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