I received an e-mail, recently…

…inviting me to participate to a press conference at MACRO - the municipal contemporary art museum of Rome - to which Odile Decq’s recent and (in?)famous annex is supposed to have added some glamour.

On 14 December 2011, at 11 AM, Rome’s Deputy Mayor for Cultural Heritage (a further not much better known Mr. Dino Gasperini) and the Director of MACRO, Mr. Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, are going to illustrate the museum’s “new course”.

Now, this is a locution that tends turning on my alertness - more so when combined with cultural policies and politicians. Nevertheless, I must admit that my curiosity is being kindled, since the conference will present (and I quote) the museum’s “new philosophy (wow!), its organization chart and (last not least) the 2012 programme”.

Call me a cynic, but I’m rather prone to imagining that the museum’s new philosophy will have more to do with the desire to submit a public institution to a more or less private foundation (which in Italy are not required to make their budget, stakeholders, or policies public), than with some particularly esoteric new cultural programme.

But only our next tomorrows will tell… Stay tuned!

(Rome, 11 December 2011)