France's Cultural Spending vs Italy's Lag: Macron's Louvre Speech and Biennale 2017

Emmanuel Macron's May 2017 inauguration speech at the Louvre pyramid was a deliberate cultural statement, though media focused on conciliatory tones and anti-terrorism. The pyramid was called an 'audacious' symbol of French innovation. France leads Europe in cultural spending percentage, while Italy trails (Il Sole 24 Ore, March 26, 2016). The 2017 Venice Biennale, curated by French Christine Macel (chief curator at Centre Pompidou since 2000), was seen as a quality choice. Macel's direction was called 'predictable' and 'nerdy' but the exhibition was solid, with thematic rooms at Arsenale and Central Pavilion forming a coherent, lively collage. Biennales are shifting from showcasing recent novelties to spanning decades, from 'new languages' to diverse media (embroidery, monochrome, performance, film), and from curator-ego to museum-like balance. The article questions why not radicalize this trend into a full cultural reflection. It notes that recent biennales (Massimiliano Gioni's based on Jung's Red Book, Okwui Enwezor's on Marx's Capital, Cecilia Alemani's Italian Pavilion on Ernesto De Martino's The Magic World) all draw from books. Italy struggles to catch up, lacking an 'audacious' architectural symbol, despite intellectual and artistic examples from Eco, Pasolini, De Martino, Bene, Mauri, and early Rai (reinterpreted in Francesco Vezzoli's show at Fondazione Prada). The article, by Marco Senaldi, appears in Artribune Magazine #38.