Videos of exhibitions, conferences, assignments and professional activities by Art Consulting.
2025. Another year of success
From the sale of 700 Balenciaga drawings to the Metropolitan Museum in New York to critical discoveries concerning Leonardo and Modigliani, from international curatorial projects to specialised publishing and social initiatives sponsored by the Italian Paralympic Committee, each intervention has confirmed one consistent line: expertise, institutional vision, commitment beyond the market.
…In 2023, we oversaw the sale to the Museo Balenciaga in Getaria of 8,362 drawings from Maison Balenciaga, originating from the collection of couturier Lorenzo Riva. In 2025, we completed the transfer of the collection, enabling the Metropolitan Museum in New York to acquire 700 drawings.
We then led exhibition projects in international museums and documented decisive discoveries in the identification of forgeries attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and Modigliani. Furthermore, our publishing house EdiXion has published new volumes, and we have carried out brand storytelling projects through art for companies in Europe and Asia.
In parallel, Art4Life and Trek4Mandela International have delivered social impact programmes with the support of the Italian Paralympic Committee, confirming that art consultancy can build value beyond 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 outright forgeries, but arbitrary attributions, apocryphal signatures, invasive restorations, altered dates. A parallel market worth $6 billion annually transforms collecting into a dangerous Russian roulette. Information asymmetries, conflicts of interest and lack of transparency make art acquisition a high-risk path, even for experienced collectors.
…Many, far too many cases prove this. We cite two striking examples. Between 2016 and 2019, Inigo Philbrick, the “mini-Madoff of art”, orchestrated multimillion-dollar frauds by manipulating sales of high-profile works. In May 2025, a Giacometti sculpture estimated at $70 million by Sotheby’s remained unsold in New York, calling into question the reliability of valuations even at the most prestigious auctions. Behind every acquisition lurk hidden traps: 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 safeguard worthless fetishes, believing them masterpieces.
The analysis draws on a lecture given by Marina Pizziolo at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo in March 2023 and is developed through 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 expertise to properly assess a work, dismantle speculative illusions and build solid collections.
Art is not a scam, but the market can treat it as such: rigour, transparency and independent verification are essential.
Lorenzo Riva’s Balenciaga drawing collection
Art Consulting curated for years the collection of approximately 9,000 historical drawings from Maison Balenciaga belonging to Lorenzo Riva, artistic director of Balenciaga in Paris between 1980 and 1982. It then facilitated the acquisition of the collection by two museums: the Balenciaga Museum in Getaria and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
…The Balenciaga Museum in Getaria, birthplace of Basque couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga, is among the world’s most important fashion museums. In December 2022, the Culture Department of the Basque government acquired for the museum 8,362 original Balenciaga drawings from couturier Lorenzo Riva’s collection: a unique ensamble. Lorenzo Riva had brought the drawings to Italy from Paris in 1982, saving them from dispersal during the fashion house’s crisis period. As artistic director of Balenciaga, he had worked with legendary top models such as Jerry Hall, and left his mark on fashion history.
In May 2023, Art Consulting organised the exhibition at the Balenciaga Museum that celebrated both the acquisition of the historical archive and Lorenzo Riva: alongside Balenciaga’s drawings, iconic garments by the Italian couturier were displayed.
The operation concluded in 2025 with the Metropolitan Museum in New York’s acquisition 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 operation confirms Art Consulting’s competence across the full scope of the art field: from painting and sculpture to historical fashion archives, from curatorial projects in international museums to institutional support for governmental acquisitions of cultural patrimony 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, work selection, intermediation. Three works shown at the Paris-Delhi-Bombay exhibition at Centre Pompidou in 2011, one of the first major shows 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 over half a century made art his second life, following a career as a professor of statistics and senior manager in public and private companies. His collections, curated by Art Consulting through different development phases, have been the subject of books and exhibitions in international museums.
The journey with him across Jodhpur, New Delhi and Mumbai led to the acquisition of works by established and emerging artists from the Indian scene. In the video, Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio recount the magic of those days in India and the extraordinary experience of building a collection alongside a collector who chose to collect in order to know and make known.
This operation confirms Art Consulting’s ability to manage all phases of complex cultural projects: from concept development to operational strategies, from specialised publishing to exhibition realisation and presentation in institutional venues.
Communicating through art: Dario Tironi for Nexion
Art Consulting conceived for Nexion, a leading company in ceramic surfaces, a brand storytelling project through art. For Cersaie 2022, we involved Dario Tironi, who created Fairy-Tiles, a sculpture made with Nexion tiles. The title plays on Tales/Tiles: from earth the human element is born, matter becomes identity. A narrative that physically represents the brand’s DNA.
…Nexion is a joint venture with offices in various Indian cities and in Italy, a leader in ceramic materials with a strong identity linked to matter and transformation. The stand designed for the 2022 edition of Cersaie, the world’s most important ceramic industry fair, was a museum-level installation: a circular wooden structure with the sculpture Fairy-Tiles at its centre.
Dario Tironi, inspired by sedimentary rocks, 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, expressing through different languages the company’s key concepts: the pursuit of beauty, nature as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for new materials. Each year a new sculpture becomes the narrative focal point of Nexion’s stand at India Design fair in New Delhi.
The video recounts the genesis of Fairy-Tiles and the communication strategy developed by Art Consulting. Art transcends time and can become an integral part of brand building, creating cultural products more effective than any advertising communication, ephemeral by nature.
An exhibition at a major museum: Paganin and Fioravanti at the Mart
Art Consulting curated at the Mart in Rovereto the dialogue 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 constructing dramatic figures beyond time. Fioravanti articulates the body within 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, curated its realisation: from critical research to catalogue, from installation to museum circulation. The dialogue between Giovanni Paganin and Ilario Fioravanti focuses on two radically different approaches to figurative sculpture in twentieth-century Italy: the body as simulacrum of the pain of living and the body as site of historical memory.
For Giovanni Paganin, the body is a solitary and conscious plunge into the pain of living: a body that rigorous nudity places beyond time. There is no consolation nor rhetoric: the body becomes an instrument of investigation into the meaning of existence, a desperate scream. Paganin participated in Corrente, a movement born in the late 1930s around the magazine of the same name, characterised by an ethical vision, 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 life’s theatre. They are chant, counterpoised to Paganin’s scream.
Art Consulting manages the Archivi di Corrente as a research, protection and valorisation project for twentieth-century Italian figurative art and has already realised exhibitions dedicated to Giovanni Paganin. The exhibition at the Mart represents an example of this expertise: not merely exhibition organisation, but development of long-term cultural projects that bring historic heritage into high-level museum and editorial circuits. The scientific catalogue documents the research conducted and offers critical tools for understanding two artistic paths that traversed the century without yielding to fashions.
Thirty years, three collections: Stellatelli and Art Consulting
Thirty years working together in building collections as research projects. From protagonists of the Corrente movement to Italian artists born from 1960, from contemporary Indian to Chinese art. Antonio Stellatelli does not buy to exclude, but to study, support, show. Consultancy, valuation, strategic management. Private collections, but with a public vocation.
…Antonio Stellatelli chooses to collect in order to know and make known. His story as a collector is testament to the Art Consulting method in building collections as research projects. Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio have accompanied him from the beginning in an art coaching relationship: discussions on objectives, scientific selection criteria, critical parameters of the collection.
Over the years, from the first major historic collection dedicated to the Corrente movement (from Renato Guttuso to Emilio Vedova, fifteen artists, sixty years of Italian art from 1930 to 1990), Stellatelli has moved on to explore new coordinates. Contemporary Italian art, with forty-three artists born from 1960 onwards, contemporary Indian art to witness the extraordinary Renaissance that India is experiencing, contemporary Chinese art and, finally, new generations of very young artists followed from their debut, through constant monitoring of galleries and studio visits. Each collection has a firmly anchored conceptual pivot, precise geographical and generational coordinates, because chance is the worst ally in realising any idea.
The interview documents the application of Art Consulting services: consultancy in creation (project, budget determination, targeted acquisitions), valuation and archiving (appraisals, authenticity, cataloguing, conservation), strategic management (overview, planning, asset protection), exhibition organisation (concept, curation, critical texts, logistics). This collector’s story is the story of his collections’ exhibitions: works arrive only temporarily on domestic walls.
The work is documented in scientific volumes edited by Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio: Corrente e oltre. La collezione Stellatelli, This is Not Propaganda. Contemporary Italian Art, The Indian Renaissance and finally Arte italiana contemporanea. New Entries. A concrete example of how the 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 constructs 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 accompanies collectors and institutions with method: strategy, authenticity, governance of choices.
…In April 2024 in Mantua, at Palazzo Mantegna, Marina Pizziolo spoke at the III Biennale of Women’s Photography, curated by Alessia Locatelli, with an analysis of the dynamics governing collecting and its impact on collective memory.
Collecting is never a neutral act: every choice determines which artists, which narratives, which values enter private space and, by reflection, public space. A collection outlines the gaze of whoever builds it, but ends up also constructing the cultural space we inhabit. This applies to private collections as much as to 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 starting point is clear: in museums only 5% of exhibited works are by women artists. Acquisition policies reflect systemic asymmetries that have consolidated over decades and still today condition the market, exhibitions, criticism. In public monuments inaugurated from 2000 to today in Italy, the female body is often represented through stereotypes belonging to narratives of the past: the washerwoman, the gleaner, even two journalists killed at work depicted nude. These examples are not anecdotes, they are indicators of a representation problem that can only be resolved if decision-makers change perspective.
Increasing women’s collecting means bringing more perspectives, more criteria, more governance of choices into a system that today is imbalanced.
When more women collect, when more women decide, the narratives that circulate, the public space that is constructed, the cultural policies that are adopted concretely change.
Curatorial projects in historic sites: Castello di Malcesine
Art Consulting curates site-specific projects that transform historic monuments into instruments of public dialogue. In 2024 at the Castello Scaligero di Malcesine, the exhibition by Iranian artist Bahar Heidarzade prompted a poetic collective reflection on violence against women. An immersive installation, a series of conceptual installations and a performance through the streets of the village, all united by the principle of sharing.
…The curatorial work of Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio integrates institutional partnerships, engagement with local communities and critical documentation. The exhibition’s enhanced catalogue 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 from papier-mâché, with newspaper sheets bearing disturbing news reports. Personal memories merge with collective ones, amplified by the contemporary media system.
The immersive installation in the Sala Labia of the Castello Scaligero forms the core of the exhibition. At the centre of the room, a video is projected onto 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, created by the artist through the streets of Malcesine. Heidarzade carries an enormous boulder through the village, aided by those who spontaneously choose to do so. The performance translates into physical action the concept of sharing the burden and collective participation in pain. The memories of violence suffered, when shared, can transform 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 the parameters and strategies of professional art advisory. Investment thresholds, analysis of artworks and artists’ curricula, differentiation of works over time. Services: acquisition consultancy, valuation, maintenance, insurance, inheritance transmission, 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 potential liquidity requires a minimum budget of 20,000 euros and a documented market history. Below this figure, one enters consumer art, works for personal enjoyment without prospects of resale.
The fundamental distinction is between the primary market and the secondary market. At the outset, the gallery establishes uniform pricing: all works have the same price range, regardless of specific quality. However, after ten years, only works of excellent quality maintain their value or increase it. This is why it is important to rely on specialists who know how to recognise quality works. Reading an artist’s curriculum is also a sophisticated skill. Presence at international fairs, even very important ones (such as Art Basel or Frieze), confirms only the commercial capability of the representing gallery, not the artist’s historical-critical relevance.
Professional art advisory means accompanying the collector through the entire cycle of building a collection. Art must be treated as an asset to be managed with professional criteria.
The final advice: better to limit purchases, but buy only works of great quality, always with certain provenance and sellers of great standing.
The site-specific collection for New York University Abu Dhabi
The New York University campus rises in Abu Dhabi’s Cultural District, alongside the Louvre. Designed by Rafael Viñoly, it is inhabited by faculty and students from over one hundred countries. For this global cultural system, we developed a site-specific art collection over five years. A project requiring strategic vision, direct relationships with artists worldwide, and intimate understanding of the Emirates’ socio-cultural fabric.
…Since 2012, Art Consulting has operated continuously in the United Arab Emirates as strategic and operational adviser for cultural programmes commissioned by public entities. In the case of New York University Abu Dhabi, it was not a matter of selecting works or intervening once the project was complete, but of participating from the earliest stages in creating a complex cultural system, when the campus was still under construction.
This enabled direct and continuous dialogue with the project team and with architect Rafael Viñoly, making it possible to adapt spaces, volumes, flows and technical specifications to realise monumental installations that were authentically site-specific, integrating from the outset artistic, architectural, functional and safety requirements. Over the course of five years, coordinating a small but decisive number of institutional stakeholders, predominantly government representatives from 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.
Within this framework, Art Consulting governed complex relationships and high-level negotiations with leading figures from 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, to key figures from the regional context such as Mohammed Kazem, Ahmed Mater and Hassan Sharif.
This experience generated a replicable framework for cultural governance, applicable to large government programmes, new-generation universities and integrated urban districts, particularly when intervention takes place during the early construction phase and requires coordination between iconic architecture, public policies and cultural plurality.
Video in production
Screening, authenticity, and collection value
Do you truly know what you have collected? Many collectors trust that their holdings match what they were told and certified at the time of purchase. But they do not know the actual substance of the works: materials, authenticity, historical coherence, value retention over time. Risk begins when a work has been acquired without thorough examination. That is when gaps in due diligence become patrimonial critical issues.
…In recent decades, this divide between possession and knowledge has widened particularly in rapidly growing countries and contexts of new wealth. Collections built in compressed timeframes, aggressive advisory, poorly regulated markets, cultural institutions established before any real critical stratification. It happened in Europe and the United States in the postwar period and has recurred in many emerging countries and the Gulf. The result is recurring: million-dollar collections structurally fragile, valuations that cannot withstand deep verification, works that pose serious authenticity problems when finally analysed.
In this scenario, knowing what you own is not a cultural choice but a patrimonial necessity. It means deciding what to preserve, insure, enhance, transmit. And, when necessary, restructure.
Romano Ravasio has developed a perspective 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 contemporary art restoration, this path has made him an international reference in recognising forgeries and problematic works. For over twenty years, he has been called upon by museums, major collectors and institutions to address cases of dubious works and complex falsifications. In some cases, this work has also led to judicial interventions and large-scale seizures, including one of the most extensive operations ever conducted, with over 4,500 works seized: all proven false after analysis.
Thousands of works examined, high-profile cases, apparently extraordinary collections profoundly downsized after rigorous verification. False attributions to artists of the calibre of Leonardo da Vinci, Modigliani or Goya demonstrate how thin the line between discovery and illusion is, when independent control is lacking.
Marina Pizziolo’s work integrates this experience with historical method, documentary research and systemic vision of collections, transforming analysis into conscious governance of patrimony. Valuation, archiving and maintenance are not services, but necessary consequences of a perspective that governs the collection in its entirety.
The greatness of a collection lies in its authenticity.
Video in preparation.