Giuseppe Garrera: The Collector Who Calls the Future 'Stupid'

In an interview with Artribune, Roman collector and musicologist Giuseppe Garrera (born 1962) dismisses the future as 'stupid' and advises young collectors to cherish 'not knowing how to live.' Garrera, scientific coordinator of the Master in Economics and Management of Art and Cultural Heritage at the Sole 24 Ore Business School in Rome, cites the British Museum as an inspirational model of 'piracy' and 'accumulation.' He praises the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome over Villa Borghese for its collection of looted treasures. His ideal heist would be a Venetian painting by Titian, specifically the 'Assunta' at Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, which he calls 'the greatest farewell in art history.' Garrera co-curated a recent exhibition for the centenary of Pier Paolo Pasolini at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome with Cesare Pietroiusti and Clara Tosi Pamphili, emphasizing 'philological reasons as poetic and guerrilla reasons.' He sees Porta Portese market as a site of relics needing rescue. Garrera predicts three future trends: gluttony as civil living, the definitive victory of the rich, and life being constantly 'used' as Elsa Morante foresaw. He ends by recalling his parents who worked in factories their whole lives, saying 'no forgiveness.'