Venice, seventy years of Cini: the celebration of the Foundation of knowledge
“Ua reform of the statute, which I hope to bring to completion by the end of this year, with the aim of making private financing more stable and to insert a scientific committee that it will support the general secretary Renata Codello ». See the book published by Marsilio Arte The Giorgio Cini Foundation – Seventy years of historycurated by Pasquale Gagliardi and Egidio Ivetic, celebrates the seventy years (which fell in 2021) of Cini, its president Giovanni Bazoli, banker with an untiring passion for the promotion of culture, it looks to the past to project yourself into the future. Director of Cini since 1987, president emeritus of Intesa Sanpaolo, Bazoli has been its president since 1999.
Keeping accounts and “planning” culture
“It will be important to guarantee current private funding, but also to find new ones – continues Bazoli – while to make projects, governance is essential so that there is a manager who knows how to deal with entrepreneurial qualities but that you know how to design also from a cultural and artistic point of view. It is difficult to summarize these two elements in one person“. Hence the intention to set up a scientific committee. «We have to define better the competences of the secretary generalcurrently summarized in a few lines, and, in this context, insert the scientific committee, to be really operational: composed of three people, who are close to Venice, but who also have an international projection. I would see Carlo Ossola (philologist and literary critic, director of the International course of High Culture, ed) ».
The memory of the personality
The foundation was created in 1951 at the behest of the politician and entrepreneur Vittorio Cini, in memory of his missing son. Workshop, laboratory, study center: now San Giorgio is a crossroads of international knowledge. “I believe that Cini was also closer by the people he had to give life to the foundation – reflects Bazoli -. Looking at my long story, still current, I want to remember the knowledge and attendance of some personalities who made me grow: Feliciano Benvenuti, Vittore Branca, Pasquale Gagliardi. Past things, relationships n. When I became president, requested by the patriarchate Marco Cé, I was very well received: perhaps precisely because I was not Venetian ».
Initiatives and the future
The volume retraces the role of the foundation and its ability to give life to a cultural initiative (exhibitions, research and custodian of priceless archives and documents), but also a place of exchange and meeting even in the most complex phases of history, come the Cold War. «The vocation of the island is that it is a lively place of art and studies – recalls Bazoli -. The restorations, then, must be inserted into today’s life. Often in Italy you are averse to innovation and there is a tendency to conservation. I think instead of what has been done, from the Lo Squero auditorium to the refectory restored to its original meaning with the copy of the Wedding at Cana of Veronese ». And he continues with an appeal: «It is important that the Cini Foundation is perceived as part of Venice, not as an elitist place. It is necessary that we collaborate with all cultural realities, we are now engaged as participants in the Foundation Venice World Capital of Sustainability “. Renato Brunetta, president of Venice Foundation World Capital of Sustainability. «We must grow, reduce the distance for Venice to be united. St. George it is essential to conjugate the myth and the economic basis to renew Venice over time: if these elements do not stay together, the city is destined to fail ». On the role of Cini in the contemporary world and questions Bazoli. «In a world so different from the fifties, which changes with dizzying rapidity, can we believe that the foundation still has a reason to exist in protecting and cultivating the tradition of Venice? Yes. The meaning of this mission is more relevant than ever“.
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October 22, 2022 (change October 22, 2022 | 18:35)
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