Direction of museums and art foundations

To direct is to decide

From institution to heritage. Over the years Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio have assumed directorial positions at several institutions: the Museo Treccani and the Fondazione Corrente in Milan, the Fondazione Bandera in Busto Arsizio, and they established and directed the Fondazione Francesco Pellin in Varese. The already active institutions had venues, audiences, exhibition programmes and official recognition. Exhibition programmes, conferences and permanent collections were accessible to the public. The Guttuso collection of Francesco Pellin was initially private, without an institutional project or public destination. In all cases, whether open museums or a private collection, the situation was the same: works, history and activities existed. What was missing was a cultural direction capable of making them accessible to a broader audience. In the case of the Museo Treccani the artist was widely promoted in cultural contexts through exhibitions and present in public and private collections, but no recognised archive existed nor any reference authority for the authenticity of works. The circulation of forgeries and unverifiable attributions rendered the real consistency of the production uncertain. The permanent exhibition was almost a private memory. Fondazione Bandera had its own collection, not publicly visible, and an exhibition calendar without a stable cultural direction. The Pellin collection was a deposit of hidden treasures in crates and vaults, only minimally on display.

Direction as a decisional act. The relationship with these institutions follows a precise progression: not a career that grows, but a responsibility that takes root. Every assignment imposed a binding direction: to transform the institutions from sites of memory into living cultural subjects. At Fondazione Corrente Marina Pizziolo enters the scientific committee after the exhibition organised at the Triennale di Milano for the fiftieth anniversary of the Liberation and the exhibition on the Stellatelli collection at the Museo della Permanente, dedicated to the artists of Corrente. The foundation had standing and prestige, but its activity remained conference-based and nostalgic. The decision, as a committee member with responsibility for cultural activities, is to make it operational: exhibitions of artists still living, public reconstruction of the movement, outreach towards external institutions. The project for Palazzo Reale in Milan with Vittorio Sgarbi, with the exhibition Corrente. Le parole della vita, and the exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Aligi Sassu. Antologica 1927-1999, both with Skira catalogues, originate from this direction. This is followed by the direction of the Museo Treccani, which housed the works of the artist and founder of Corrente, Ernesto Treccani, with direct effects on the public and also on the market. In the same building, the Casa delle Rondini, where the Museo Treccani was located, Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio establish the Archivio Treccani and the Archivi di Corrente, with an official public announcement, and assume their direction. Before this, no formal authority existed: the artist, out of discretion, avoided public positions on forgeries, and the movement had no single point of reference. The archives introduce a binding position, breaking existing equilibria: works excluded, attributions contested, withdrawals from the market. The exhibitions change in nature: no longer celebratory, but historical and critical reconstructions of the entire trajectory, from the 1930s to the end. The responsibility extends to an entire institution. Fondazione Bandera in Busto Arsizio invites Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio to curate an exhibition on Treccani and Corrente. The exhibition will be followed by a request to direct the foundation. The direction is total: programme, budget, relations with publishers, selection of artists. And the choice is clear: to abandon the previous heterogeneous programming and make the foundation a laboratory dedicated to emerging contemporary Italian art. Artists selected before market validation, exhibitions built as curatorial cycles, signed catalogues and books. With Francesco Pellin the condition precedes the assignment: to curate the growing collection. Francesco Pellin, an entrepreneur from Varese, had built a major private collection of works by Renato Guttuso, partly conserved in crates and vaults. The proposal, accepted before any curatorial activity began, was explicit: the collection had to become a foundation, then a museum. Art Consulting followed every institutional step, defined the permanent installation, established the exhibition policy. The major exhibition in Rome with an Electa catalogue was the first public proof of a heritage that previously had no institutional form.

The results of direction. In all the directed institutions the change was of the same kind: not quantitative growth, but a change of scale and identity. Fondazione Corrente entered the major institutional circuit. The exhibitions at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and Palazzo Reale in Milan, both with Skira catalogues, were not isolated events: they were the result of a precise cultural direction. The Museo Treccani acquired a stable historical identity, with a programme that replaced celebratory exhibitions with systematic reconstructions of the artist’s work and the movement. Fondazione Bandera, a museum of local scale, produced during the period of direction Skira catalogues for every exhibition cycle. The editorial choice was not incidental: it was the measure of the cultural direction adopted. A generic container became a recognisable laboratory. Fondazione Francesco Pellin still exists and is active. It is the most concrete result: before, nothing existed; today it is a public institution with a permanent collection, documented exhibition history and an Electa catalogue. In all cases heterogeneous programming was replaced by an exclusive direction. The institutions gained identity through exclusions, not through additions. This is the difference between managing a museum and directing it.