Chiara Gatti, Director of the MAN in Nuoro, Cristiana Perrella, Director of MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, and Lorenzo Respi, Director of Exhibitions and Collections at the AGO Modena Fabbriche Culturali ETS Foundation, are the three new members of AMACI’s Executive Board. At the General Assembly of Members held on 23 June 2025, members also confirmed Elisabetta Barisoni, Head of the Museums Area / Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art and the Fortuny Museum, and Managing Director of MUVE in Mestre, and Emma Zanella, Director General of the Foundation Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art – MA*GA Museum, as Board members; Marcella Beccaria, Deputy Director, Chief Curator and Curator of Collections at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, as Vice-President; and Lorenzo Balbi, Director of MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art of Bologna, was reconfirmed for a second term as President.
President Lorenzo Balbi, on behalf of the entire Assembly, thanked outgoing Board member Caterina Riva, Artistic Director of MACTE Museum of Contemporary Art in Termoli, for her dedication during her term as a member of the Executive Board, and for her constant encouragement to see museums as an integral part of society and of the world we live in, which they should reflect and act as a barometer for.
“Supporting museum policies linked to contemporary culture, an institutional culture of the contemporary, and promoting public artistic heritage by encouraging the study and dissemination of contemporary visual languages in Italy and abroad,” said President Balbi, “naturally remain the cornerstones of the path we intend to continue along over the next three years. With close attention to the challenges of the present, our commitment will be to bring Italian museums back to the centre of social and international debate, as inclusive, participatory and sustainable spaces, capable of fostering critical awareness, promoting cultural diversity and actively contributing to the development of good practice for the benefit of local and global communities.”
Indeed, the 2022–2025 term saw AMACI complement its statutory aims with new, concrete objectives geared towards research and reflection on the museum as an entity – in terms of identity, role, strategy and operations – within the critical and constantly evolving context of the contemporary world, as well as welcoming two new member museums: the “Luigi Spazzapan” Regional Gallery of Contemporary Art, Gradisca d’Isonzo, and MAC – Museum of Contemporary Art of Lissone.
The Association today is increasingly focused on producing content useful not only to institutions but, more broadly, to the contemporary art community; evidence of this can be seen in the free, online study days held over the past three years with the ongoing support of the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, dedicated to current issues relevant to Italian contemporary art museums, aimed at offering a valuable opportunity for dialogue and continuing education among professionals, scholars, artists, sector operators, students and the curious public. These include Studiare al Museo/Studiare il Museo (2025), curated by Elisabetta Barisoni and Emma Zanella; Il Tempo del Museo. Il museo d’arte contemporanea presidio di complessità (2024), curated by the AMACI Executive Board; I Musei d’arte contemporanea e lo sviluppo sostenibile: una pratica necessaria (2023), curated by Marcella Beccaria and led by Henry McGhie; and Cogli l’attimo, Carpe diem, Seize the Day (2022), curated by Marcella Beccaria. There is also the Museo Ventuno conference platform, which reached its second edition in 2023 with the conference and companion publication Museums at the Ecological Turn | I Musei alla svolta Ecologica, edited by AMACI and NERO Editions, which in 2025 was also presented at two events of national and international significance – Artissima in Milan and Miss Read in Berlin – with the volume’s authors in attendance.
Over the past three years, activities to promote contemporary art have naturally continued, such as the Giornata del Contemporaneo, the key event that officially marks the opening of the artistic season in Italy, which in 2024 reached its twentieth edition, celebrated with a major project developed in partnership with Treccani Arte – Treccani Arte x AMACI – involving 12 artists who, across the twenty editions, had created the event’s guiding image, for the production of a limited-edition series of fine art prints; discussion of good practice through an update of the AMACI Guidelines, the contemporary art museums’ handbook, a document aimed at securing recognition of the artist as a professional figure; and activities promoting, enhancing and disseminating the public contemporary heritage held by AMACI museums, through an increase in works added to the RAAM Archive (archivioraam.org), an ongoing online archive that has now reached more than 12,000 works and 4,200 artists, enabling users – whether sector professionals, scholars, museum-goers or simply members of the public browsing online – to gain an understanding of the quality, scale and distribution of contemporary public heritage.
Over the past three years, AMACI has also launched a new website, beginning the rebranding of its visual identity. All of this was made possible thanks to significant technical sponsorship, including from Artshell – promoter of the first Italian-made software for managing and enhancing art collections – which had already supported the participant experience at the seventeenth Giornata del Contemporaneo through a new platform and an event-mapping feature for events proposed by member museums, and from M&C SAATCHI. Alongside these, valuable support through sponsorship from Alfasigma and Studio Ardizzone has helped improve the Association’s internal sustainability.
BIOGRAPHIES
LORENZO BALBI, President Director, MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art of Bologna An art critic and curator, Lorenzo Balbi has been Director of MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art of Bologna since 2017, and President of AMACI – Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums since 2022. For over ten years he worked at the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation in Turin, where he taught at CAMPO – Curatorial Training Programme and curated the Residency for Young Foreign Curators project, as well as several exhibitions across the Foundation’s various venues. A lecturer in Art Systems at DAMS, University of Bologna, and in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture at Bologna Business School, he regularly gives lectures at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, IED in Florence and Turin, and other institutes of higher education. He sits on the Scientific Committee of the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna and of the Farnesina Collection, on the Board of the Lucio Saffaro Foundation, and on the advisory boards of the Fondazione Scuola Beni e Attività Culturali and Luiss Business School. He chairs the Public Art Commission of the City of Bologna and, since 2024, has been a full member of the Accademia Clementina. In 2024 he curated the 60th edition of the October Salon / Belgrade Biennial.
MARCELLA BECCARIA, Vice-President Deputy Director, Chief Curator and Curator of Collections, Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Rivoli An art historian, curator and author, Marcella Beccaria has been Deputy Director of Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art since 2023 and Head of CRRI – the Museum’s Research Centre. She has held the role of Chief Curator and Curator of Collections at the Museum since 2012. She teaches at NABA Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan. A graduate in the History of Art Criticism from the University of Turin, she went on to complete a specialisation in Art History and Museum Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Science, Boston University. She began her curatorial career in the United States, at the Museum of Fine Arts and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. At Castello di Rivoli she has helped develop the collection and curated numerous exhibitions and accompanying catalogues. She has curated exhibitions at national and international institutions, including the ICA, London; Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Museum of Art, Santa Barbara; OGR, Turin; Gallerie d’Italia, Milan; The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg; and EXPO CHICAGO, Chicago. She has also written essays for catalogues published by the Bourse de Commerce–Pinault Collection, Paris; La Biennale di Venezia; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museu Serralves, Porto; Stedelijk Museum, Ghent; Istanbul Biennial; Kunstmuseum Winterthur; FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims; SAM – Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Centre Pompidou, Metz; and Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg. She has been Vice-President of AMACI since 2020.
ELISABETTA BARISONI Head of the Museums Area / Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art and the Fortuny Museum Managing Director, MUVE, Mestre From 2003 to 2015 she was curator of temporary exhibitions at Mart – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. In 2006 she completed a postgraduate diploma in contemporary art at the University of Bologna’s School of Specialisation, and in 2015 obtained a PhD in Cultural Heritage and Territory from the University of Verona. She has curated numerous temporary exhibitions and catalogues dedicated to twentieth-century art. She has been a member of the Executive Board of AMACI – Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums since 2018, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Antonio Canova Gypsotheca Museum in Possagno since 2024. Since 2015 she has worked at the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, first as Head of Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art, and now as Head of the Museums Area and Managing Director of MUVE in Mestre.
CHIARA GATTI Director, MAN Museum, Nuoro Chiara Gatti is an art historian and critic. She writes for “La Repubblica”, including its “Il Venerdì” and “Robinson” supplements. She is Director of the MAN Museum in Nuoro. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the MUDEC Museum in Milan and of the Museo di Villa dei Cedri in Bellinzona, Switzerland. She has curated exhibitions for public and private institutions, including Baj, Baj Chez Baj; Giotto e Fontana. Lo spazio d’oro; Emilio Isgrò. Sillogismo del cavallo; Matisse. Metamorfosi; Giacometti e Fontana: la ricerca dell’assoluto; Guernica. Contro tutte le guerre; and Regina. Della Scultura. Together with Emilio Isgrò she wrote Io non cancello. La mia vita fraintesa (Solferino, 2024), and with Lea Vergine she wrote L’arte non è faccenda di persone perbene (Rizzoli, 2016). She has edited three volumes dedicated to the work of Leone Lodi (Officina Libraria, 2015–2017), and curated the selection of essays by Giorgio Mascherpa collected in L’emozione e l’incanto dell’arte. Da Lotto a Fontana (Ceribelli, 2019). With Interlinea she has published Insolite natività (2012), Chagall. Sogno di una notte di Natale (2018), Nevicate d’arte (2021), Sotto una buona stella (2022) and Una storia dorata (2023).
CRISTIANA PERRELLA Director, MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome Also curator for 2025 of the contemporary art programme Conciliazione 5 for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, and Artistic Director of the Milan Design Film Festival, Cristiana Perrella is a curator and art critic. She directed the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, Prato, from 2018 to 2021, and previously headed the Contemporary Arts Programme at the British School at Rome (1998–2008). She founded and curated SACS – Sicily’s Contemporary Art Desk – for RISO, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Sicily, Palermo (2007–2009), and curated the art and science project at the Marino Golinelli Foundation, Bologna (2009–2018). As an independent curator she has worked with Italian and international institutions, including MAXXI, Rome; IKSV, Istanbul; and the Prada Foundation, Milan. She teaches Management and Economics of the Arts and Cultural Institutions on the master’s degree course in Theory and History of the Arts and Image at Università San Raffaele, Milan.
LORENZO RESPI Director of Exhibitions and Collections, AGO Modena Fabbriche Culturali ETS Foundation He was a member of the Scientific Committee of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation in Milan (2018–2024), where he had previously served as Conservator and Curator (2004–2012). He has taught Legal Institutions for Cultural Heritage on the undergraduate degree course in Sciences and Technologies for the Study and Conservation of Cultural Heritage and Information Media at the Faculty of Sciences and Technologies, University of Milan. He works in museology and museography, and on projects for the management, protection and enhancement of cultural heritage.
EMMA ZANELLA Director General, Foundation Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art – MAGA Museum* Emma Zanella, Director General of the MA*GA Museum and of the Foundation that governs it, teaches Museum Education 2 and is a member of the Doctoral College at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. Mindful of embedding the Museum within complex cultural and territorial networks, in 2021 she devised and coordinated the regional Archivi del Contemporaneo network, part of the Lombardy Region’s Integrated Plans for Culture, which is ongoing and continually expanding; the Officina Contemporanea urban cultural network (2013–2016); and the Alto Milanese contemporary art museum hub between 2015 and 2017. She directed MIDEC, the International Museum of Ceramic Design, in Laveno Mombello (2018–2010 [sic]); the postgraduate specialisation programme in Visual Arts and Performing Arts Disciplines – Museum Education, at the Accademia Galli di Como – IED Milan (2012–2013); and the Twister regional network for contemporary art (2009–2010). From 1995 to 2020 she was Secretary General and coordinator of the Gallarate City National Visual Arts Prize. She took part in the Scientific Committee for the creation of the Altar and Ambo for the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta by Claudio Parmiggiani (2015–2018). An historian of contemporary art, she curates and organises numerous exhibitions and projects relating to Italian and international artistic research, museology, the relationship between the contemporary arts, art in public space, and artists’ archives.
