Cesena The clash over Serra’s house flares up: art demands space

The cash clouds of an authoritative voice from the world of culture are gathering in Cesena in Renato Serra’s hometown at the very moment when the mentors of students of the Technical Institute of Economics named after this great man of literature will start a mentoring programme. He visits his home the day after tomorrow in Viale Carducci. They will do this by opening it free to the public from 3-6pm on the third Saturday of every month, as well as being available for reservations by school groups.

Marisa Zattini, Artistic Director of Cesena “Il Vicolo”, throws arrows at the municipal administration, regrets the experiences she had heroic inside that place, and invites us to think about how to improve them. He recalls that “Renato Serra is formally considered a model for our contemporary, one of the most beloved thinkers of the twentieth century” and that his hometown of Viale Carducci is “a special place of ‘memory’, the motto of the province, making even of the rooms that were his physical and mental abode. He underscores the value of that house For which “the institution was founded in 2005”. But with a touch of venom, he confirms that inside there are “some original furnishings and others of pure imagination, remakes and fakes, put in place by the designer then commissioned by the municipality of Cesena, who brought them partly out of the dusty municipal warehouses. So It is a matter of “representation” and not a complete “where and how it was.” It must be specified so as not to mislead the audience.

Zattini then reconstructed the valuation of the house of the great man of letters which was later resolved. «The museum was directed by Andrea Donati from Rimini, with whom she collaborated on the exhibition At Home, dedicated to portraits of an artist from Rimini. Then the establishment was suppressed and erased. In 2015, thanks to the hearing and acceptance of the Ministry of Culture, our multi-year project “Fragilis mortalitas” began: a taste for contemporary art, not only in the context of a “brilliant” house. Four years of events with artists invited to reinterpret the literary works of Renato Serra, starting with an examination of a learned conscience. Eight artists and about thirty side events dedicated to music, poetry recitals, book presentations and much more. Last year, a summer rendezvous began, too: “Nocturnal Symphonies,” with live music and poets reciting their verses in the intimate courtyard of Serra’s house. But with the arrival of the new administration, everything died. And not because of a lack of basic funds.

The invitation is to take an example of what is being done at the House of Leopardi, which has opened up to contemporary art through the “Intervalli” project. The Leopardi family – he explains – «intends to embark on a polyphonic journey between the different languages ​​of the present and the future» in that prestigious place, and comments: «This is done with the aim of promoting tourism and culture! We have done this for a long time in Serra’s house, and we also exported the “Fragilis Mortalitas” project to Luxembourg »then« with the translation of Serra’s works into French In the sad period of the epidemic, we won one of ten from the Ministry for Heritage, Cultural and Tourism Activities, but the board considered that It is appropriate not to give communication and visibility to citizens.”

A final reflection: “Artists and poets, with their creative sensibility, are able to bring new life to museums as well as to the homes of the ‘illuminated’. We try to think big and interdisciplinary, with an emphasis on cultural, artistic, poetic, musical and cinematic inlays ».