Moral and responsible projects structured on sustainable growth plans going towards one of the most important missions of new museology: community property. Museums renew themselves without improvising, accepting the new challenges suggested by the Faro Convention (everyone’s right to cultural heritage) and solicited by the new needs of the community, which will emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic with stress, states of anxiety and deprived of important reference points. In order to best accomplish the task of providing a public service, the first step to put in place, it will be the one concerning economic sustainability. The contribution of public authorities needs to be backed with new fundraising methods, considering that the most commonly used until few years ago, sponsorship, will be a less and less viable path in favor of a partnership between museums and private corporations.
A question to Sergio Risaliti, director of the Museo Novecento in Florence
Contemporary culture hasn’t yet found an Italian development pattern and our artists, apart from those who moved to other countries, find it harder to promote their work. Besides supervising one of the most important museums in our country, you are an international curator: what the relationship between museums and contemporary artists should be?
The role of a museum, today, is to be a workshop of ideas and new artistical experiments, as well as a guardian of the artistic heritage. The Museo Novecento follows this editorial line. We are involved in many projects: a new school for curators is coming, as well as the official museum magazine, and we are about to start an artist residency program in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. We are also planning to open a school of the interdisciplinary thinking, where philosophers, poets, writers and scientists can cross their experiences and knowledges with the artists. We established the Wonderful prize in support of the Italian artists under the age of 40 and we activated Outdoor, a revolutionary initiative which has brought artworks into primary and secondary schools, and even in the Sollicciano prison. Much is yet to be done, but this is the only way forward: to foster a handover to new generations, allowing them to take part into the making of tomorrow’s society.
The museum of contemporary art in Cavalese (Trento)
The museum structure developed in the historic Rizzoli Palace in Cavalese is dynamic and very active and it was established in 2001 with the acquisition of Giancarlo Baccoli’s collection: he was a doctor from Brescia with the passion for the art of the twentieth century. For seven years, the structure has welcomed some of the artists who wrote important pages in the history of art: a time in which an area with a natural touristic vocation and a great identity has become aware of the importance of contemporary culture. However, the real turning point came in 2008 when the collector, after relocating, reclaimed his collection and actually pushed the exhibition structure to rethink itself through a more dynamic, crosssectional, didactic and interdisciplinary activity linked to contemporary culture, switching international experimental proposals and socio-cultural themes related to the area.
