Specials

The Italian piazza was born at the same time as history and society. People would meet in an historic public place to socialize. Now this has fallen out of favor. Today we do get together via the Internet, but increasingly less in historic and public spaces. Perhaps the only open place where we continue to meet is in the café, and only occasionally. The Internet and the café have become our versions of the contemporary piazza. I invite us all to reflect on this, before making a few points about the cultural piazza that I am helping to create here in New York thanks to my role as the director of the Italian Cultural Institute (ICI).

 

The exhibition I curated at the Met on Giorgio Morandi was a great success and was transformed into a true piazza where the best of Italian art was on display.

As the Director of the ICI and the exhibition’s curator, I tried to look at the Met as a new piazza in New York City to present Italian art. And my hope is that there will be many more of these piazzas as I continue my work as the Director of the ICI.

What does it mean to bring an exhibition of Morandi’s work here? First and foremost, it means to disseminate and display - in piazza - the excellence of Italian culture. Italian culture in the United States is generally seen as the province of the “old masters” and rarely includes contemporary art. It will suffice to recall the exhibit of Fontana’s work which took place two years ago; at first, the exhibit was seen almost as suspect, but it then gathered success and went on to become a true symbol of contemporary Italian culture.

 

All of this is thanks to the growing synergy between the ICI, which I have the privilege to direct, and the Consulate. The success of the Morandi exhibit can also be attributed to the program “Sundays at the Met” which provides art lectures to the public. I was asked to give 27 curatorial talks, and by doing so, spotlight Italian art. Specific gatherings like these are fundamental in the strategy to publicize our culture here.

In order to broaden the Italian cultural piazza, it is also important to complete the project of creating a much-anticipated exhibit space of Italian art in New York. The ministries of Foreign Affairs and of Cultural Heritage have expressed great support for this project. This space will represent the “connection hub” between Italy’s culture and Italian culture abroad. It will be a new media piazza which will join and connect other piazzas. It is only in this way that will we succeed in mapping the past and the present.

 

It is important to give the ICI a new image, both from a physical point of view (I will seek to restore several floors of the Institute, transforming them into new exhibition spaces) and metaphorically: a new sense of italianità is needed, one that is more expansive and ambitious. It is necessary to plan a new institutional identity for the ICI here in order to broaden and disseminate the “architecture” of Italian culture within a piazza that is increasingly broader and far-reaching.