Italy's post-pandemic creative reset: reforming bureaucracy, tax evasion, and art fairs

Massimiliano Tonelli argues that Italy's COVID-19 crisis offers a unique opportunity for creative and structural change. He calls for tackling long-standing issues: penalizing norms, oppressive bureaucracy, corruption, laws favoring the dishonest, and privacy overriding justice or security. Tonelli questions whether Italy can still tolerate tax evasion, slow justice deterring foreign investment, and ideological over pragmatic choices. In the art world, he asks if the country can afford multiple contemporary art fairs instead of one strong, significant fair. The article, published in Artribune Magazine #54, urges using the pandemic as a painful but beneficial bath to cleanse national defects, comparing the moment to World War II. Tonelli, director of Exibart (1999-2011) and editorial director of Gambero Rosso (2012-2021), emphasizes individual choices against waste, energy squandering, and campanilismo.