{"id":2055,"date":"2009-09-29T10:30:20","date_gmt":"2009-09-29T08:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.arttrav.com\/?p=2055"},"modified":"2014-09-10T15:48:14","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T13:48:14","slug":"florence-is-the-new-florence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arttrav.com\/florence\/florence-is-the-new-florence\/","title":{"rendered":"Florence is the Next Florence"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last week, Giuliano da Empoli published the draft of a document<\/a> called “Florence is the Next Florence<\/strong>: a strategy for contemporary art and culture in Florence” on the BarCamp website. In the spirit of crowdsourcing, he calls out for commentary in his conclusion, and I readily step in. Not only because I feel a strong sense of duty to my adoptive city<\/strong>, and because I like to be included, but because I happen to have provided the title for this document<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

Warning: This article is LONG – 2100 words – so please set aside at least 5-10 minutes to read it.<\/em><\/p>\n

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At BarCamp Palazzo Vecchio last June <\/a>I had the opportunity to congratulate the Superintendant on his good work and expressed my conviction that things were going to get better, because “Florence is the Next Florence”. He apparently liked this phrase and assures me that footnote #4 will soon contain my full name (now that he knows it – thanks, facebook!).<\/p>\n

The document is 16 pages of tight scholarly writing in Italian, so it’s going to need a summary for the English audience<\/strong>. One certainly hopes that the final version will be available in English translation to make it more accessible to the outside world. So, what follows is a summary interspersed with my commentary.<\/p>\n

Before turning to my summary though, I am happy to say that da Empoli totally grasped what I meant by that phrase, so this is not just a title but an idea. And it’s not just my idea, but the idea of a group of active, intelligent residents that is finally mirrored by and acted upon by its government. <\/em><\/strong>It is the idea that Florence used to be so great – the cradle of the Renaissance and all that – that it should not be a very large step towards being great again; the moment of degeneration has been just a drop in the bucket of a much longer history. The city does not need to be the new New York. It is not looking to be a new Rome like it was in the Quattrocento. It doesn’t want a Renaissance, because it wants to look forward, not back; build upon its great past, take advantage of its current resources, and see a great future that is necessarily different from what has already taken place.<\/p>\n

0.1 The Florentine Paradox<\/span><\/p>\n

Da Empoli’s document starts with pretty much these ideas, framed in contrast to recent developments and urban renewal in Rome, Toronto (my first home town!), and Minneapolis – to which numerous other examples could be added.<\/p>\n

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One major indicator that Florence is not providing a sufficiently contemporary experience is that tourists tend to come here once in their lives<\/strong>, go to the Uffizi, and then do not come back. This is an aspect that Laura de Benedetto and I discussed during her political campaign<\/a>, and it’s one that needs to be addressed. While she and I love jetting over to London to see the latest exhibit at the V&A or to take in some theatre, Florence fails to create this pull over an international traveler. The irony is that there IS actually a lot going on around here that is worth experiencing – something beyond the Uffizi – but in ten years I barely noticed it. This summer I opened my eyes and the result is an arttrav stuffed with events listings<\/a>, but the city cannot rely on the good acts of its resident bloggers and foreign newspapers (I often check The Florentine<\/a> to find out what’s on). This communication issue is one taken up again later in Empoli’s document.<\/p>\n

Our assessore is working on those return visits with solutions that at the same time will enrich the city for its residents. When I think of the gigantic problems he faces, I really would not want his job.<\/strong> He rightly states that creating a cultural plan will not be the solution; we need cooperation from all sectors of the city’s politics in order to pave the way for the creative sector of the city and what it will contribute to our social and cultural life. So the “culture superintendant” cannot address all those things that will make up the plan for the New Florence (that means this is not the place to talk about the dog shit on the streets – that’s Renzi’s problem), but the rest of the document first introduces the broad lines of the plan, then a series of smaller “things to do”.<\/p>\n

0.2 The post-Bilbao strategy<\/span><\/p>\n

The next section of the document contains an interesting observation on the strategies used since the 1990s for city (re)growth. Starting with the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the idea was to get a superstar architect from another city and build an expensive “container” for art – and it didn’t really matter what went in.<\/p>\n

Da Empoli says that Florence needs to put its emphasis on the “thing contained” rather than on the container<\/strong>, and I could not agree more. I add that we are fortunate to have plenty of perfectly good old containers that can be renovated and into which we can put a LOT of great content, since about 90% of the Uffizi collection is in storage. It seems that there is little interest to get that stuff out of storage though, and I suppose people are right to say that we need a differentiated cultural offering. We need something contemporary, which means we need first to create it. Poor Florence, it hasn’t produced much since the early sixteenth century. But let’s not forget that we can enjoy older art in new ways; the current cultural offering needs to be spruced up and made more accessible.<\/p>\n

The good assessore hopes to depend on two main resources<\/strong> of the Florentine people that provide the guideline for the next part of the document. The first is “Indisciplina<\/em><\/strong>“, which is a great word that means unruliness but also implies interdisiplinarity. Citing examples like MIT’s medialab, this is a call to break down boundaries.<\/p>\n

The second resource is one that I can’t help but appreciate: an openness to the outside that includes making use of what us stranieri<\/em><\/strong> – foreigners – can contribute. This is put into an appreciable historical context that cites the role of foreigners in establishing two of my favourite institutes between which I divide my days researching Renaissance tapestries: Bernard Berenson developed the taste for trecento art and donated his villa to Harvard for a specialist library (I Tatti<\/a>); the German Kunsthistorisches Institut<\/a> is a site for continued research and discussion in art history and a draw for foreign scholars. Stranieri<\/em> today seem to be considered more often a problem than a resource, whereas we have a lot to give.<\/p>\n

0.3 Starting with what we’ve got<\/span><\/p>\n

For this part I’m going to depart from the document’s precise order and bullet points to focus on a few important points. A series of suggestions regarding access to and communication of the arts are right on target:<\/p>\n