Black Lives Matter protests expose systemic racism in Italian art world

The murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, by former police officer Derek Chauvin sparked global protests against systemic racism and police brutality. In the US, major museums like the New Museum, Guggenheim, and MOCA Los Angeles responded with delayed and tepid social media posts, drawing criticism for their lack of meaningful action. Chaédria LaBouvier, the first Black curator in the Guggenheim's 80-year history, publicly denounced the institution for institutional racism and hypocrisy. Data from a May 2019 study shows that 85.4% of works in major US museum collections are by white artists, and only 1.2% by African American artists. Black curators make up just 4% of US curatorial staff, per the Andrew Mellon Foundation. In Italy, the MAXXI museum launched #MAXXIforBlackLivesMatter on June 10, but the Italian art and cultural sector remains largely inactive on racial issues. A protest in Rome's Piazza del Popolo highlighted the lack of representation of Afro-descendant artists and the stalled Ius Culturae citizenship reform. Activist Haroun Fall connected citizenship to the absence of Black artists in Italian media and culture. The article notes the absence of physical spaces for Afro-descendant artists in Italy, contrasting with institutions like The Studio Museum in Harlem, La Colonie in Paris, Autograph ABP in London, and Savvy Contemporary in Berlin. The author, Johanne Affricot, founder of GRIOTmag, calls for urgent creation of such spaces in Italy.