Intellectuals Appeal for Lara Vinca Masini's Bacchelli Pension

A group of 28 Italian intellectuals, including Tomaso Montanari, Claudio Nardi, David Palterer, and Alberto Breschi, has renewed an appeal to Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and Minister Dario Franceschini to grant art critic Lara Vinca Masini the Bacchelli Law pension. Masini, a 90-year-old Florentine art historian living in Via Solferino, was denied the €24,000 annual benefit in June 2014 despite a request supported by colleagues and the Tuscany Region, on grounds that her fame did not meet legal criteria. The new appeal, reported by Fulvio Paloscia in La Repubblica and organized by the online magazine Cultura commestibile directed by Simone Siliani, argues that the rejection was a mistake given Masini's pivotal role in Italian contemporary art criticism since the 1960s. She directed the Museo Progressivo d'Arte Contemporanea in Livorno, co-curated its first Biennale with Vittorio Fagone, and served on the Italian Commission for Visual Arts and Architecture at the Venice Biennale in 1978. She won the Premio dei Lincei per la Critica in 1986 and authored major works such as 'Arte Contemporanea. La linea dell'unicità' (1989) and 'L'arte del Novecento. Dall'Espressionismo al Multimediale.' In 2010, she donated her archive of about 30,000 volumes to the Centro Pecci in Prato.