Talks with the scientific board of the festival of Contemporary art for the first highlights and reflections on Forms of collecting/Forme della committenza. We interviewed Pier luigi Sacco.
The “Giornata del Contemporaneo” (the national day dedicated to contemporary art) and the “strike” by the cultural operators on November 12 highlighted the problems that museums are facing in this period of crisis. What is the role of museums in a period of limited resources? What kind of strategies and synergies can be activated in relation to the processes of urban development, both at a local and a national level?
Today, museums are going through a deep change, which doesn’t depend on the crisis: they are institutions founded in a socio-economic context in which most people had limited possibilities for travelling, visiting and therefore knowledge. Nowadays, the situation is almost the opposite: the opportunities for travelling, visiting and therefore knowledge are definitely more than the possibility (and above all the real willingness) for grasping these opportunities. As a consequence, museums cannot longer be only places for the collection and presentation of objects and information. They have to be especially places that make visitors increasingly active and conscious when it comes to research and exploration of the meanings promoted and spread around by the museums. In a moment of crisis, the problem is even more evident because the reduced availability of resources often leads the public administration to make extreme choices. In the case of public museums, which in Italy as all around Europe play a remarkable role in culture as a whole, it is important to establish museums, in public opinion, as dynamic places where knowledge, skills and social value are produced. Often, in order to fulfil this function in a successful and innovative way, it is important to create collaborative networks with other similar or complementary institutions with the aim of co-producing exhibitions and projects, innovation and the circulation of models and good practices in all the museum’s activities. The periods of crisis are often those in which necessity stimulates the creativity and positive adaptations of the cultural system to a negative environment. This period, in which we see the development and the spread of new technologies, increasing the capacity of involving the public in knowledge experiences, could be one of those.
The results of the auctions of last semester, show a healthy contemporary art market or in any case a period of recovery. What do you think about it?
Contemporary art is now a mass phenomenon, even in terms of collecting, especially thanks to the interest stimulated in the new generations of potential buyers coming from emerging economic and cultural countries. The big international fairs are real global shows, followed by the media, which have important resources for communication and for increasing the participation (and encouraging buying) of a larger and larger group of collectors, who often dedicate as much time and resources to their acquisitions as they would to an important entrepreneurial project. Private collections are often built, archived and exhibited with the same attention and the same standards which characterise the public collections of the museums, and in many cases with bigger economical means. Also, the small collectors are less driven by impulse and carefully follow the increasingly extensive global art calendar. In this situation the market can go down, but it is difficult to think that a collapse could occur and threaten the role that contemporary art has now gained in the global social context. It is a long term trend, which can only be set off course by huge socio-economic changes.
Increasingly, private galleries act as cultural promoters which operate at an international level. How has the role of galleries in Italy changed since the 60s and in your opinion what does the future hold?
Galleries should follow these dynamics of change and act less as sellers and intermediaries and more as cultural organisers, who can be build an influential reference for their collectors and an inspiring guide in the complicated and chaotic jungle of new artists, new events, new opportunities for discovery (and, as a consequence, for investments). It is a hard job, often developed on uncertain and small margins, especially when attention to quality is high. Italy, compared to the “great powers” of the international art system, such as the USA, the UK and Germany, does not have an extensive number of important galleries which can influence the market at an international level. However, it does have a large number of galleries of a good or an excellent level and above all a widespread, skilled collecting system, which often focuses on the international marketplace for its most important purchases. The crisis is going to make a selection even in Italy, where compared to other countries, the situation is complicated by the lack of public attention to cultural issues and by a harsh tax system, which creates well-known problems and contradictions. This situation means that Italian gallery owners and managers need effort, courage and creative skills that are above average. I hope they will deal with this challenge, as they have dealt with so many in the past.
The fourth edition of the festival of Contemporary art will be entitled Forms of collecting/Forme della committenza. In a tour that will involve different forms of patronage, what are the issues to focus on?
We should focus on the changed role of public patronage and the need to establish the reasons and the mission of this kind of patronage in public opinion (and in political consciousness); on the big increase in private institutional collecting; on the role that contemporary art is going to obtain in the process of urban transformation, not only from the point of view of physical spaces, but also of the city’s identity; on the private and public system of patronage in emerging cultural and economic countries and their relationship with the role of patronage already established in Western countries. The role of the new technological means in defining new spaces and new forms of patronage. The increasing interest of firms in direct involvement in art and artists in their processes of creation of economic value. These are only some examples, but they are the most significant.
