Contemporary art and the Anthropocene

The article analyses the essential cooperation of public bodies and private operators for the management of museums in different juridical contexts. Moving from the actual legal and institutional environment, the author introduces a comparison between the Italian and British management models in order to recommend an evolution in the national museum management perspective. The analysis is developed through the study of practical cases, such as the comparison between the National Gallery in London and La Galleria Nazionale in Rome which clearly describes the distance between the two national institutional systems and their approach to private bodies. Moreover, thanks to the example offered by the Community Foundations instrument, the article means to express a serious need for Italian museums to be considered and regulated as a common good which asks the whole national community for a firm cooperation.

La Galleria Raffaella Cortese ospita fino al 2 marzo la quarta mostra personale dedicata a Marcello Maloberti e curata da Pierre Bal-Blanc. Il percorso espositivo si sviluppa su tre ambienti di Via Stradella a Milano, quali diramazioni di un medesimo corpo.

Dalla fine del XX secolo, i tentativi di rileggere le collezioni museali sono stati declinati in alcuni casi attraverso narrazioni non lineari che non rispettano le tradizionali categorie della storia dell'arte. L'articolo intende indagare le cause di questa tendenza globale dal punto di vista culturale, sociopolitico e teorico. Queste pratiche si sono avvicinate alle collezioni museali come ad una forma di archivio e sono state sviluppate negli ultimi trent'anni in particolare da diverse istituzioni dedicate all'arte contemporanea, rimodellando gli allestimenti e il loro ruolo istituzionale. Attraverso l'analisi di tre casi studio, il Centre Pompidou di Parigi con la mostra Modernités plurielles (2013-2015), il Van Abbemuseum di Eindhoven con The Making of Modern Art (2017-2021) e il Museo Sztuki di Łódź con Atlas of Modernity (2014-oggi), l'articolo analizza la necessità istituzionale dei musei contemporanei di rileggere e riscrivere la storia della "modernità" e delle loro collezioni nel XXI secolo attraverso l'uso di narrazioni dialettiche. Il rapporto tra l'istituzione, le collezioni e la loro narrazione sarà analizzato come carattere distintivo dell'identità e della missione del museo.

This interview took the shape of a long-distance conversation between Utrecht and Rome. Pietro Ballero (Turin, 1992) told us about his work from his new home in the Netherlands where he decided to move a few months ago to further his artistic research at the HKU. From inside a typical, vertically developed Dutch apartment under a sloping roof, Ballero told us his story: from training at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin (2016) to the master's degree in Visual Arts and Fashion at the IUAV in Venice, with periods at the École supérieure des arts Saint Luc in Liège (Belgium) and at the École Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, up to residencies, such as BoCs Art in Cosenza (2019) curated by Giacinto di Pietrantonio. In 2019 he was then selected among the finalists of the eighth edition of the Francesco Fabbri Prize for Contemporary Arts.

Museums and exhibition spaces, in Italy and abroad, have in recent years elaborated programs proposing practices of collective care for the Anthropocene. These institutions have become catalysts for experimental research using multiple languages, disciplines and approaches. Overcoming the boundary between nature and culture created by Western modernity, contaminating perspectives, methodologies and practices, they have tried in different ways to throw their gaze out of the anthropocentric trap. A change of perspective that does not diminish humanity, but instead pushes to a new relationship with the otherness imagining, and in some cases generating, multispecific, ecosystemic, Anthropocene communities.

In the face of accelerating eco-cultural changes, a science museum triggers an alliance with the humanities and starts a creative platform on the climate crisis, anthropocenic interactions and ecological transition, that leverages the universal language of contemporary art to translate complex issues. This experience of contamination and multidisciplinarity carried out by the MUSE – Science Museum in Trento is the content of the book. Inside, a theoretical section explains the rationale for the museum and follows the different stages put into practice by the project in its first year of life, told in the words of the participants themselves. Its method of education and transformation is unveiled to make it an example that can be multiplied and thus help build desirable futures.