Art bonus, companies focus on culture

TURIN. Patronage is transformed, culture becomes inclusive, sustainability is social and not just environmental. These are some of the watchwords heard at the conference Investment in culture, identity asset of quality companies at the Industrial Union of Turin. Everything revolves around the request for simplification and expansion of the Art bonus, the tax credit of 65 percent of the donated amount introduced in 2014. Currently it applies to those who make donations in support of the Italian public cultural heritage, but if extended to private world would probably act as a driving force for a series of initiatives.

Entrepreneurs are obviously looking forward to it. «Investing in culture can be one of a company’s missions, it creates returns and in the end brings work, which is what we need», explains Giorgio Marsiaj, president of the Industrial Union. Antonio Calabrò, president of Museimpresa speaks of «a more qualified and more shrewd application of the Art bonus». In pursuing the fundamental partnership between public and private, the Art bonus must become a real culture bonus that helps companies invest in the sector and intervene on public assets».

There are many examples that go in this direction: from Lavazza in Turin to Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in Milan, from the Palazzina dei Principi to Capodimonte in Naples, which will be renamed Lia and Marcello Rumma to house the contemporary art collection donated by them, to the Egyptian of Turin which will open its courtyard and the underlying immersive room for free and imagine the rearrangement of the Galleria dei Re, up to the association of people and companies “Parma, I’m here!”.

One might think that all these efforts arise from the inefficiency and insufficiency of public management, but there is space, as Paola Dubini from Bocconi points out, even in the differentiation of image and substance between “mine, ours and everyone’s”, for a hybrid model such as the extremely popular exhibition on Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which has included various private initiatives with international public benefit.