Culture / Other
Italy’s planned museum for painter Mario Sironi draws warnings over fascist legacy
Two Italian art historians said a state museum devoted to Sironi, a Mussolini supporter, must make clear it does not endorse fascism, The Art Newspaper reported.
Source-checked story: attributed primary-source and published reporting; no on-location reporting.
Italy’s government plans to open a state museum in Rome next year devoted to Mario Sironi, the Modernist painter who supported Benito Mussolini, and two prominent art historians warned that it risks sanitizing the country’s fascist past, The Art Newspaper reported Nov. 6.
The museum is expected to occupy the headquarters of the National Association of War Disabled and Wounded Veterans, a fascist-era building inaugurated in 1928 that houses two Sironi frescoes, one depicting Mussolini on horseback. It will show 30 works the culture ministry recently acquired from the Mario Sironi Archive and 90 more on loan, spanning the 1910s to the 1950s. Sironi joined the fascist movement in 1919 and contributed more than 1,700 political cartoons and illustrations to Mussolini’s newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia. Press materials for the museum do not mention fascism or Mussolini, the publication reported.
Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli called the project “the defining achievement of my term in office, and the one of which I am most proud.” Tomaso Montanari, rector of the University for Foreigners of Siena and a member of the ministry’s scientific committee, said he did not oppose the museum but that “the museum's educational material must make clear that there is no endorsement of fascism.” Fabio Benzi, a curator on the museum’s scientific committee, told Le Journal des Arts that “the danger is of legitimising a certain authoritarian aesthetic under the guise of cultural rediscovery.”
Montanari said the ministry had “partially” accepted his argument to include works from periods other than the fascist era. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party has roots in Italy’s postwar neo-fascist movement. The museum is expected to open next year; the same week, government members presented an exhibition marking the 90th anniversary of Rome’s fascist-era EUR district.
What we know / what we don't
What we know
- Two Italian art historians said a state museum devoted to Sironi, a Mussolini supporter, must make clear it does not endorse fascism, The Art Newspaper reported.
What we don't know
- The museum’s exact opening date and final curatorial approach are not known.
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