Video of exhibitions, conferences, assignments and professional activities of Art Consulting.
2025. Another year of successes
From the sale of 700 Balenciaga drawings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to critical discoveries on Leonardo and Modigliani, from international curatorial projects to specialised publishing, through to social initiatives under the patronage of the Italian Paralympic Committee, every intervention confirmed a single direction: competence, institutional vision, commitment beyond the market.
…In 2023 we had directed the sale to the Museo Balenciaga in Getaria of 8,362 drawings from the Maison Balenciaga, from the collection of couturier Lorenzo Riva. In 2025 we completed the transfer of the collection, securing the acquisition of 700 drawings by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
We then conducted exhibition projects in international museums and documented decisive discoveries in the verification of forgeries attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and Modigliani. Our publishing house EdiXion published new volumes and we developed brand storytelling projects through art for companies in Europe and Asia.
In parallel, Art4Life and Trek4Mandela International realised programmes of social impact with the support of the Italian Paralympic Committee, confirming that art direction can build value also outside market logic. 2026 continues with the same determination: vision, rigour, responsibility.
Is art a scam? The risks of art collecting
Up to 50% of works circulating on the market present critical issues: not only complete forgeries, but arbitrary attributions, apocryphal signatures, invasive restorations, altered datings. A parallel market worth 6 billion dollars annually transforms collecting into a dangerous game of Russian roulette. Information asymmetries, conflicts of interest and lack of transparency make the purchase of art a high-risk process, even for experienced collectors.
…Many, far too many cases prove this. We cite two, both striking. Between 2016 and 2019, Inigo Philbrick, the “mini Madoff of art”, orchestrated million-dollar frauds by manipulating sales of high-profile works. In May 2025, a Giacometti sculpture estimated at 70 million dollars by Sotheby’s remained unsold in New York, calling into question the reliability of valuations even in the most prestigious auctions. Behind every acquisition, risks are concealed: auction houses, galleries and online platforms often operate by exploiting the information asymmetry between seller and buyer, where the seller knows everything and the buyer navigates in the dark. The result is disconcerting: many collectors hold worthless objects, believing them to be masterworks.
The analysis draws on a conference delivered by Marina Pizziolo at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo in March 2023 and deepens the documentary and scientific research conducted by Art Consulting.
Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio, with thirty years of experience across museum institutions and international private collections, bring historical documentation and technical competence to evaluate a work correctly, dismantle speculative illusions and build solid collections.
Art is not a scam, but the market can treat it as one: rigour, transparency and independent verification are necessary.
The Balenciaga drawing collection of Lorenzo Riva
Art Consulting curated for years the collection of approximately 9,000 historical drawings of the Maison Balenciaga belonging to Lorenzo Riva, artistic director of Balenciaga in Paris between 1980 and 1982. It then directed the acquisition of the collection by two museums: the Museo Balenciaga in Getaria and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
…The Museo Balenciaga in Getaria, birthplace of the Basque couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga, is among the most important fashion museums in the world. In December 2022, the Culture Department of the Basque government acquired for the museum 8,362 original Balenciaga drawings from the collection of couturier Lorenzo Riva: a unique collection.
Lorenzo Riva had brought the drawings from Paris to Italy in 1982, saving them from dispersal during the period of crisis at the fashion house. As artistic director of Balenciaga, he had worked with legendary supermodels, including Jerry Hall, and left a mark on the history of fashion. In May 2023 Art Consulting organised the exhibition at the Museo Balenciaga that celebrated both the acquisition of the historical archive and Lorenzo Riva: alongside the Balenciaga drawings, iconic garments by the Italian couturier were exhibited.
The process concluded in 2025 with the acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York of the remaining 700 Balenciaga drawings from the Riva collection.
In the video, Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio recount how Riva became artistic director of Balenciaga and recall their friendship with him. This project confirms the competence of Art Consulting across the full breadth of the art field: from painting and sculpture to historical fashion archives, from direction in international museums to governmental acquisitions of cultural heritage held in private collections.
Antonio Stellatelli: a collection of contemporary Indian art
A collection designed and curated by Art Consulting: artist scouting, studio visits in New Delhi and Mumbai, selection of works, representation in negotiations. Three works from the collection exhibited at the Paris-Delhi-Bombay exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 2011, one of the first major exhibitions on contemporary Indian art. Project concluded with the presentation of the book by Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in New Delhi.
…Antonio Stellatelli was an Italian collector who for more than half a century made art his second life, after a career as a professor of statistics and manager at the highest levels of public and private companies. His collections, directed by Art Consulting across their various phases, have been the subject of books and exhibitions in international museums.
The journey with him through Jodhpur, New Delhi and Mumbai led to the acquisition of works by established and emerging artists of the Indian scene. Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio recount in the video the experience of those days in India and the extraordinary process of building a collection together with a collector who chose to collect in order to know and to make known.
This project confirms the capacity of Art Consulting to manage all phases of complex cultural projects: from the development of a concept to operational strategies, from specialised publishing to the realisation of exhibitions and presentation in institutional venues.
Communicating with art: Dario Tironi for Nexion
Art Consulting developed for Nexion, a leading company in ceramic surfaces, a brand storytelling project through art. For Cersaie 2022 we engaged Dario Tironi, who created Fairy-Tiles, a sculpture made from Nexion tiles. The title plays on Tales/Tiles: from the earth the human element emerges, matter becomes identity. A narrative that physically embodies the DNA of the brand.
…Nexion is a joint venture with locations in several Indian cities and in Italy, a leader in ceramic materials with a strong identity tied to matter and transformation. The stand designed for the 2022 edition of Cersaie, the most important international trade fair in the ceramic sector, was a museum-level installation: a circular wooden structure with the sculpture Fairy-Tiles at its centre.
Dario Tironi, drawing inspiration from sedimentary rock, created a human body by layering fragmented tiles. The female figure is symbolic: it represents origin, transformation, the passage from inert matter to form.
Fairy-Tiles initiated an ongoing collaboration. Since 2023 Art Consulting has been developing with Nexion a collection of sculptures by Indian artists, who express through different languages the key concepts of the company: the pursuit of beauty, nature as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for new materials. Each year a new sculpture becomes the narrative centrepiece of the Nexion stand at India Design in New Delhi.
The video recounts the creation of Fairy-Tiles and the communication strategy developed by Art Consulting. Art transcends time and can become an integral part of brand construction, creating cultural products more effective than any advertising communication, which by its nature is ephemeral.
An exhibition in a major museum: Paganin and Fioravanti at the Mart
Art Consulting curated at the Mart in Rovereto the confrontation between Giovanni Paganin and Ilario Fioravanti, twentieth-century sculptors who place at the centre two opposing visions of the human figure. Paganin cries out his pain of living by building dramatic figures, outside of time. Fioravanti situates the body in history. Critical research, catalogue, museum circulation. The project continued in other venues.
…The project originated from an idea by Vittorio Sgarbi, president of the Mart, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Art Consulting, in collaboration with Marisa Zattini, directed its realisation: from critical research to catalogue, from installation to museum circulation.
The confrontation between Giovanni Paganin and Ilario Fioravanti brings into focus two radically different ways of understanding figurative sculpture in twentieth-century Italy: the body as simulacrum of the pain of living, and the body as the site of historical memory.
For Giovanni Paganin the body is a solitary and conscious descent into the pain of living: a body that rigorous nudity places outside of time. There is no consolation nor rhetoric: the body becomes an instrument of inquiry into the meaning of existence, a desperate cry. Paganin participated in Corrente, a movement born at the end of the 1930s around the journal of the same name, characterised by an ethical vision, the rejection of academicism and the centrality of the human figure.
Ilario Fioravanti represents the poetic alternative: his sculptures inhabit time. Women, men and children do not renounce playing their part in the theatre of life. They are the song, counterposed to Paganin’s cry.
Art Consulting directs the Archivi di Corrente as a project of research, preservation and valorisation of Italian figurative art of the twentieth century and has already realised exhibitions dedicated to Giovanni Paganin. The exhibition at the Mart represents an example of this competence: not merely exhibition organisation, but the development of long-term cultural projects that bring historical heritage into high-level museum and publishing circuits. The scientific catalogue documents the research conducted and offers critical instruments for the understanding of two artistic trajectories that traversed the century without yielding to fashion.
Thirty years, three collections: Stellatelli and Art Consulting
Thirty years of work together in the construction of collections as research projects. From the protagonists of the Corrente movement to Italian artists born from 1960, from contemporary Indian art to Chinese art. Antonio Stellatelli does not collect to exclude, but to study, support and show. Direction, evaluation, strategic management. Private collections, but with a public vocation.
…Antonio Stellatelli chooses to collect in order to know and to make known. His history as a collector is testimony to the Art Consulting method in the construction of collections as research projects. Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio direct him from the outset in a relationship of art coaching: discussions on purpose, scientific criteria of selection, critical boundaries of the collection.
Over the years, from the first major historical collection dedicated to the Corrente movement (from Renato Guttuso to Emilio Vedova, fifteen artists, sixty years of Italian art from 1930 to 1990), Stellatelli moves to explore new coordinates. Contemporary Italian art, with forty-three artists born from 1960 onwards; contemporary Indian art, to bear witness to the extraordinary renaissance that India is living; contemporary Chinese art; and finally, new generations of very young artists followed from their debut, through constant monitoring of galleries and studio visits. Every collection has a solid conceptual axis, precise geographical and generational coordinates, because chance is the worst ally in the realisation of any idea.
The interview documents the application of Art Consulting services: direction in creation (project, budget definition, targeted acquisitions), evaluation and archiving (appraisals, authenticity, cataloguing, conservation), strategic management (overall vision, planning, heritage protection), exhibition organisation (concept, curatorial direction, critical texts, logistics). The history of this collector is the history of the exhibitions of his collections: the works arrive only temporarily at the domestic walls.
The work is documented in scientific volumes by Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio: Corrente e oltre. La collezione Stellatelli, This is not propaganda. Arte contemporanea italiana, The Indian Renaissance and Arte italiana contemporanea. New Entries. A concrete example of how capacity for growth, curiosity for new languages and the desire to understand build, with Art Consulting, a unique observatory on Italian and international art.
Women and collecting: towards a new collective memory
Collecting means deciding which collective memory to build. Every choice builds value and narrative. Marina Pizziolo analyses public collecting: only 5% of works in museums are by women artists; acquisition policies reflect systemic asymmetries. More women collectors change narrative and public space. Art Consulting directs collectors and institutions with method: strategy, authenticity, governance of choices.
…In April 2024 in Mantua, at Palazzo Mantegna, Marina Pizziolo speaks at the III Biennale della Fotografia Femminile, curated by Alessia Locatelli, with an analysis of the dynamics governing collecting and its consequences for collective memory.
Collecting is never a neutral act: every choice decides which artists, which narratives, which values enter private space and, by reflection, public space. A collection draws the gaze of whoever builds it, but ends by constructing also the cultural space we inhabit. This holds for private collections as for museum acquisition policies and public commissions. When the state exhibits in museums, when a municipality commissions a monument, when a collector chooses a work, a decision is being made about which story to tell and which memory to leave.
The point of departure is clear: in museums only 5% of exhibited works are by women artists. Acquisition policies reflect systemic asymmetries that have consolidated over decades and that still today condition the market, exhibitions and criticism.
Among public monuments inaugurated from 2000 to the present in Italy, the female body is often represented through stereotypes belonging to past narratives: the washerwoman, the gleaner, even two female journalists killed at work depicted nude. These examples are not anecdotes; they are indicators of a problem of representation that is resolved only if those who decide change their perspective. Increasing female collecting means bringing more perspectives, more criteria, more governance of choices into a system that today is unbalanced.
When more women collect, when more women decide, the narratives in circulation change concretely, the public space being built changes, the cultural policies being adopted change.
Curatorial projects in historic sites: the Castello di Malcesine
Art Consulting curates site-specific projects that transform historic monuments into instruments of public dialogue. In 2024 at the Castello Scaligero in Malcesine, the exhibition of Iranian artist Bahar Heidarzade prompted a poetic collective reflection on the theme of violence against women. An immersive installation, a series of conceptual installations and a performance through the streets of the village in the spirit of shared experience.
…The curatorial work of Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio integrates institutional partnerships, engagement of local communities and critical documentation. The augmented catalogue of the exhibition was published by EdiXion.
Bahar Heidarzade is an Iranian artist forced into exile. The exhibition develops the artist’s research on the weight of memories, symbolically represented by stones made of papier-mâché, with sheets of newspapers reporting disturbing news stories. Personal memories accumulate alongside collective ones, amplified by the contemporary media system.
The immersive installation in the Sala Labia of the Castello Scaligero constitutes the nucleus of the exhibition. At the centre of the room a video is projected on the floor depicting the artist lying down, crushed by an enormous stone. Above this projection, dozens of papier-mâché stones are suspended in space. The installation materialises the theme of violence against women. The hurled stones remain suspended in flight; collective action can stop them and transform them into kites.
On one wall of the room, the performance Stone XXL is projected, realised by the artist through the streets of Malcesine. Heidarzade carries an enormous boulder through the village, helped by those who choose spontaneously to do so. The performance translates into physical action the concept of sharing the burden and collective participation in pain. The memories of violence endured, when shared, can be transformed from a paralysing weight into a possibility of hope.
Art investment strategies
A broadcast dedicated to art as an asset class in private banking. Marina Pizziolo and Mariacristina Ragazzoni analyse parameters and strategies for building collections as structured patrimony. Investment thresholds, analysis of artworks and artist curricula, differentiation of works over time. Services: acquisition direction, valuation, maintenance, insurance, inheritance transfer, art in structured portfolios.
…Marina Pizziolo of Art Consulting and Mariacristina Ragazzoni, head of art advisory at Banca Aletti, address art as an asset class within structured wealth portfolios.
Marina Pizziolo explains that investment in art requires precise parameters. To acquire works with liquidity potential, a minimum budget of 20,000 euros is required, with a documented market history. Below this figure one enters the realm of consumable art, works for personal enjoyment without prospect of repositioning.
The fundamental distinction is between the primary and secondary market. Initially the gallery sets uniform pricing: all works carry the same price range, regardless of specific quality. But after ten years, only works of excellent quality maintain or increase their value. This is why it is important to rely on specialists who can identify quality works. Reading an artist’s curriculum is also a sophisticated competence. Presence at major international fairs, including Art Basel or Frieze, confirms only the commercial capacity of the representing gallery, not the historical and critical relevance of the artist.
Building a collection requires judgment across the entire cycle: acquisition, quality, secondary market, inheritance transfer. Not a service, but a continuous decisional responsibility.
The final recommendation: limit acquisitions if necessary, but purchase only works of great quality, always with certain provenance and vendors of significant standing.
The site-specific collection for New York University Abu Dhabi
The New York University campus stands in the Cultural District of Abu Dhabi, alongside the Louvre. Designed by Rafael Viñoly, it is inhabited by faculty and students from more than one hundred countries. For this global cultural system we developed over five years a site-specific art collection. A project that required strategic vision, direct relationships with artists from around the world and knowledge of the sociocultural context of the Emirates.
…From 2012 Art Consulting operates continuously in the United Arab Emirates as strategic and operational direction for publicly commissioned cultural programmes. In the case of New York University Abu Dhabi, the assignment was not to select works or intervene after project completion, but to participate from the earliest phases in the creation of a complex cultural system, when the campus was still under construction.
This made possible a direct and continuous dialogue with the project team and with the architect Rafael Viñoly, allowing spaces, volumes, flows and technical specifications to be adapted to realise authentically site-specific monumental installations, integrating from the outset artistic, architectural, functional and safety requirements. Over five years, coordinating a limited but decisive number of institutional stakeholders, primarily governmental representatives of Abu Dhabi and New York University, in a context marked by extreme climatic constraints, rigorous maintenance requirements and educational responsibilities towards an international academic community.
In this framework Art Consulting governed complex relationships and high-level negotiations with major figures of the international scene and the MENA region, not as a curatorial exercise but as structural proof of governance, coordinating contractual deliverables, architectural compatibility and institutional requirements: from Tomás Saraceno to Alice Aycock, through to key figures of the regional context such as Mohammed Kazem, Ahmed Mater and Hassan Sharif.
This experience generated a replicable framework of cultural governance, applicable to major governmental programmes, next-generation universities and integrated urban districts, in particular when the intervention takes place in the early construction phase and requires coordination between iconic architecture, public policy and cultural plurality.
Video in preparation
Screening, authenticity, and collection value
Do you truly know what you have collected? Many collectors trust that it corresponds to what they were told and certified at the moment of purchase. But they do not know the real substance of the works: materials, authenticity, historical coherence, durability of value over time. The risk begins when a work has been acquired without thorough examination. It is then that the gaps in due diligence become heritage vulnerabilities.
…Over recent decades this gap between possession and knowledge has widened above all in countries of rapid growth and in contexts of new wealth. Collections built in compressed timeframes, aggressive market pressure, poorly regulated markets, cultural institutions born before any genuine critical stratification. It happened in Europe and the United States in the post-war period; it has recurred in many emerging countries and in the Gulf. The result is recurring: structurally fragile million-dollar collections, values that do not withstand thorough verification, works that pose serious authenticity problems when finally analysed.
In this scenario, knowing what one possesses is not a cultural choice but a heritage necessity. It means deciding what to conserve, insure, valorise, transfer. And, when necessary, to reduce.
Romano Ravasio has developed a capacity that very few possess: understanding how a work is constructed, how it is modified, how it can be altered or imitated. Trained as a conservator and restorer of ancient art, among the first in Europe to work on the restoration of contemporary art, this trajectory has made him an international reference in the identification of forgeries and problematic works.
For more than twenty years he has been called upon by museums, major collectors and institutions to address cases of dubious works and complex falsifications. In certain cases, this work has also led to judicial interventions and large-scale seizures, among them one of the most extensive operations ever conducted, with more than 4,500 works seized, all revealed to be forgeries following analysis.
Thousands of works examined, major cases, apparently extraordinary collections profoundly reduced after rigorous verification. False attributions to artists of the calibre of Leonardo da Vinci, Modigliani or Goya demonstrate how thin the boundary is between discovery and illusion, when independent verification is absent.
The work of Marina Pizziolo integrates this experience with historical method, documentary research and systemic vision of collections, transforming analysis into conscious governance of heritage. Valuation, archiving and maintenance are not services; they are the necessary consequences of a perspective that governs the collection in its entirety. The greatness of a collection lies in its authenticity.
Video in preparation.