ARTE FIERA OBSERVATORY

An innovator and creative entrepreneur, he was a professor of Fashion Design at Milan Politecnico and Scientific Director of Corriere Innovazione at the newspaper Corriere della Sera in Milan. He is the director of Progetto Marzotto and author of “The Italian Book of Innovation” (Rizzoli, 2017). He is a member of the Advisory Board Italy of UniCredit and of Gruppo Vinicolo Santa Margherita, and is strategic advisor for the Ethical Fashion Initiative of the United Nations.
He and Gea Politi co-founded Agenzia del Contemporaneo and are the editors of Flash Art magazine, which has been a content partner of Arte Fiera since the 2019 edition.

I used to consider the term “Alma mater studiorum” of the University of Bologna almost with arrogance. This was mainly due to my ignorance, reinforced by a collection of anecdotes about the “world’s oldest university,” as my friends who went there called it. Something out of Guinness for fake intellectuals, nothing more.

But over the years I discovered its revolutionary, powerful history, one that changed how education and knowledge are organised and approached throughout the world, the foundation of that unique Genius Loci that defines Bologna and Emilia-Romagna.

The University’s first structure dates to the start of a new millennium, in the year 1088, before the birth of Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor. Bologna invented a new model with students at the centre. Bound by an oath, they formed associations to support their rectors and collected money to pay their chosen teacher (as opposed to the Paris method, where the teachers pooled resources to run the Studium). It was a revolution that focussed on students - on students who demanded and achieved change.

I’ve always been fascinated by this student/teacher reversal, where the student looks for and wants the best teacher. Because he wants to promote change.

Our landmarks always have deep roots, even if they are often diluted and forgotten over the centuries. It’s the same for Bologna and its ancient university, which has given the city so much intellectual self-assurance.
The city’s unquestionably creative, undogmatic, experimental nature has always made it Italy’s avant-garde location. Other places are more “fiscal,” sorting and promoting, selling creativity. They’re more professionally managed. Bologna generates creativity due to the profound sense of intelligent and cultured freedom that governs its social and political dynamics.

So it was only logical for Bologna to host the first exhibition of Italian art (and one of the first exhibitions anywhere in the world) in the mid-’70s, when Contemporary Art hadn’t even been defined. In 1971, Bologna inaugurated DAMS (Faculty of Drama, Art and Music Studies) and had Umberto Eco. And now, for every generation, Bologna continues to be Bologna, because we’ve all been here, we’ve discovered, understood, debated, grown, and changed.

Arte Fiera was a form of free and lively education in a territory without locations or institutional attention devoted to art. An education promoted by the city and its people. Now the world has become immense, but Bologna continues to play its active role in Italy and abroad, with leaders who have both vision and freedom. Today we still need intelligent students who choose their teachers and change the rules of the game. Bologna showed the way, and it can still invent new models by believing in change and in young people.
 

Alma Mater Studiorum Library