Rome (Italy). Some leave the ship, others wonder if they were really allowed on board. One thing is certain, the major exhibition on futurism which is to be inaugurated on October 30 at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (GNAM) in Rome is taking on water from all sides. Those who were more or less officially involved in this project desired by the former Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, are preparing for a predicted shipwreck. A gigantic exhibition of 650 works initially which will ultimately have less than 400. Severe budget cuts decreed without justification, but above all without notifying either the curators or the scientific committee, not all the members of which have received a letter mission of the ministry which has not officially established it. Other prominent members, including co-curator Alberto Dambruoso, were ousted at the last moment without explanation. Without forgetting the utter chaos regarding requests for loans of works from various private collectors and public institutions. Needless to say, the writing of the catalogue, the publication of which was entrusted without a call for tenders to the Treccani publishing house which is not specialized in this field, is still only at the cover titles…
In December 2023, the man who has just resigned from his position as head of the Italian Ministry of Culture (MIC) announced with great fanfare his desire for a major retrospective on the most important Italian artistic movement of the 20th century. Its barely veiled intention to rehabilitate an avant-garde whose image had suffered in the past from the adherence to fascism of some of its most eminent representatives. In the eyes of transalpine art historians, the minister’s intention seemed above all like a rearguard battle as scientific research has made it possible to take a much more measured critical look. Gennaro Sangiuliano, who did not hesitate to present this exhibition as “the most anticipated of 2024”, seemed to forget the multiplication, in recent years, of retrospectives on futurism, starting with the one in 2008 organized at the Center Pompidou for the centenary of its birth.
Calls for the brand new Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giuli, to renounce this exhibition at the GNAM are increasing in the Italian specialist press. “Let’s stop everything, we are in total chaos and we risk international shame,” warns Massimo Duranti, specialist on the subject. “This exhibition is charlatanismadds the futurism expert, Andrea Baffoni. I prefer to stay away from this dilapidated ship. » Which now risks sinking with what was to be one of the great legacies of Gennaro Sangiuliano’s time at the Ministry of Culture.
