Author: Sherine Al Shallah
Committee: Media Committee
Date: 23/12/2024
Palazzo Reale in Milan is hosting ‘salvArti. From Confiscations to Public Collections’ from 3 December 2024 to 26 January 2025. The exhibition marks the second stage of the project ‘Art for the Culture of Legality’, which is curated by the General Management Museums of the Ministry of Culture, the National Agency for Seized and Confiscated Assets from Organized Crime, the Municipality of Milan, and the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria, in collaboration with the Ministry of the Interior. The project began with a preview at the Hendrik Christian Andersen Museum in Rome and will conclude at the Palazzo della Cultura in Reggio Calabria.
The project intends to have both a disruptive and symbolic value affirming the principle of legality and raising citizen awareness on the issues of fighting organized crime and the importance of safeguarding cultural heritage. The project’s objective is to contribute to the social consensus for strengthening the state’s actions against organized crime. On a rainy Saturday evening, the exhibition was packed with people attracted by the free admission and the chance to enjoy and stand so close to amazing artworks. While the entry to the exhibition is a mural describing the project and the first room displays a video of police actors in an incident of confiscating the artwork, the banners in the artwork rooms only focus on the themes of the artwork and its value. The visitors were impressed by the quality of the artwork available for free access in an unassuming space. The exhibition attracted media coverage, including by Art Majeur, Liberiamo, RaiNews and Reuters.
SalvArti displays more than 80 artworks in a thoughtful thematic layout, and includes graphic art, installations, photographs, paintings and sculptures by artists such as Jan Van Oost, Rana Bishara, Jawad Al Malhi, Leonor Fini, Enrico Baj, Dennis Oppenheim, Mirko Pagliacci, Pero Pizzi Cannella, Keith Harring, Sandro Chia, Emilio Isgro, Luigi Ontani, Afro Basaldella, Emilio Vedova, Antonio Corpora, Carla Accardi, Victor Vasarely, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Ottone Rosai, Domenico Cantatore, Gianni Dova, Fausto Pirandello, Alberto Sughi, Antonio Bueno, Luigi Veronesi, Piero Dorazio, Giorgio de Chirico, Mario Sironi, Lucio Fontana, Massimo Campigli, Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol, Mario Schifano, Robert Rauschenberg, Christo, and others.
SalvArti links directly to the missions of both EPPO and STEPPO. EPPO’s key objective is to eradicate organized crime, and STEPPO’s partnership with the University of Milan-Bicocca acknowledges the roles of public education and awareness in achieving this objective.