Rome’s Sironi museum plan puts fascism at the center

By Tom Whitfield

Giorgia Meloni’s government plans to open a state-run museum for Modernist painter Mario Sironi in Rome next year, displaying 30 recently acquired works and 90 archive loans in a monumental fascist-era building inaugurated in 1928. One of the building’s two Sironi frescoes depicts Mussolini on horseback. The museum’s press materials do not mention Mussolini or fascism, according to The Art Newspaper.

The collection

Culture minister Alessandro Giuli unveiled the plans on Tuesday. The museum will display 30 works recently acquired by the ministry from the Mario Sironi Archive in Rome: paintings, drawings and preparatory sketches. The archive will lend 90 more, bringing the announced total to 120.

The project places the museum within the Associazione Nazionale fra Mutilati ed Invalidi di Guerra (National Association of War Disabled and Wounded Veterans), in a monumental fascist-era building opened in 1928. Sironi painted the building’s two major frescoes 10 years later.

Giuli called the project “the defining achievement of my term in office, and the one of which I am most proud.” That is a personal claim about the ministry’s record, not evidence that the museum has settled how it will teach Sironi’s politics.

The political record

According to The Art Newspaper, Sironi joined the fascist movement in 1919 and contributed more than 1,700 political cartoons and illustrations to Il Popolo d’Italia, Mussolini’s newspaper.

The announced program spans more than four decades, from the 1910s to the 1950s. It includes Sironi’s Futurist work, metaphysical-influenced paintings and monumental commissions awarded under the fascist regime.

The Art Newspaper identified Meloni’s Brothers of Italy as having political roots in the postwar Italian neo-fascist movement. That political lineage makes the publicity omission consequential, although silence in press material does not establish what the museum’s final educational texts will say.

The historians’ warning

Members of Italy’s cultural sector have pressed the institution to address Sironi’s politics. Two leading art historians have articulated the stakes.

Tomaso Montanari, an art historian and rector of the Università per Stranieri di Siena (University for Foreigners of Siena), told The Art Newspaper that he does not oppose the museum. He said: “Since Italy is a republic founded on anti-fascism, the museum's educational material must make clear that there is no endorsement of fascism.”

Montanari sits on the culture ministry’s scientific committee. He said the initial proposal focused “overwhelmingly” on Sironi’s fascist-period work. The ministry “partially” heeded his argument for including work from other periods. That concession narrows the imbalance without removing it.

Fabio Benzi, an art historian and curator who sits on the museum’s scientific committee, told Le Journal Des Arts: “The danger is of legitimising a certain authoritarian aesthetic under the guise of cultural rediscovery.” The Art Newspaper said it had contacted the culture ministry for comment.

Government context

Last year, the ministry acquired the former Rome home of Giacomo Balla, the Futurist painter who initially supported fascism; the house now operates as a museum. On Thursday 5 November, key members of Meloni’s government presented a new exhibition celebrating the 90th anniversary of the EUR district, which The Art Newspaper described as Rome’s grandest example of fascist-era planning.

Taken together, the Balla acquisition and the EUR exhibition place the Sironi museum amid government activity involving fascist-era sites and artists. They do not answer how the new institution should frame its subject.

What does the museum change for Sironi’s legacy?

For a museum visitor, the practical change will be interpretive. The announced span from the 1910s to the 1950s could place Sironi’s development, including Futurism and metaphysical-influenced work, into a fuller account than the initial emphasis allowed. It does not by itself resolve the political issue.

Montanari’s condition is exact: educational material must make clear that there is no endorsement of fascism. Benzi’s warning is institutional as well as historical. A state museum can broaden the record, but without labels and context, its authority risks conferring the legitimacy they reject.

Until the educational material states plainly that the museum does not endorse fascism, Montanari’s central objection remains unresolved.