Exhibiting art of the fascist ventennio: curatorial choices, installation strategies, and critical reception from Arte Moderna in Italia 1915–1935 (Florence, 1967) to Annitrenta (Milan, 1982)

The article analyses the ways in which the artistic production of the fascist ventennio has been presented in Italian exhibitions in the post-WWII period: for obvious reasons, this is a thorny topic from a political and ideological point of view more than a historical and artistic one. Amidst controversy, censure, oblivion and exploitation, exhibitions played a fundamental role given the opportunity and enormous responsibility of reaching a wider, more heterogeneous public than the specialist audience to whom scholarly essays are addressed. The article examines the first great exhibition devoted to artistic production during the ventennio, “Arte moderna in Italia, 1915-1935” organised in 1967 in Florence by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, and the huge exhibition “Gli Annitrenta: Arte e cultura in Italia”, organised in Milan in 1982 and curated by a group of scholars headed by Renato Barilli. An exhibition of "pure art" (painting and sculpture) the former, a totalizing reconstruction of the 1930s the latter. Based on highly controversial critical reviews, the article delves into the curatorial choices, the essays in the catalogues and the displaying projects of the abovementioned exhibitions, against the background of their respective historical contexts. From the uncritical alignment of works to the theatricalization of exhibition design, the different display approaches of the two exhibitions to artistic production under dictatorship stress the unresolved relationship of Republican Italy with its recent past, which still conditions the practice of "curating fascism" in Italy.