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A “NEW” MONA LISA THEORY
While many have pondered why Mona Lisa smiles, the new question among researchers focuses on who Mona Lisa is. As Agence France-Presse reports, the Italian historian Roberto Zapperi is the latest researcher to propose a theory about the identity of the smiling subject in Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. According to Zapperi, the “Jaconde” does not capture Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine merchant, as was reported by Giorgio Vasari in 1550. Citing the minutes of a meeting that took place between Leonardo and Cardinal Louis d’Aragon at the Clos Lucé in central France, Zapperi argues that the artist showed the cardinal three paintings, including the now-famous portrait that hangs in the Louvre. Moreover, Leonardo explained that the painting was commissioned by Julien de Médicis and represented Pacifica Brandani, one of his many mistresses. Brandani died shortly after she had an illegitimate child with her lover. Far from offering a brand-new argument, Zapperi asserts that Brandani’s identity has been long known to experts “but almost always ignored” in favor of Vasari’s version of events. “Lisa [del Giocondo] is not the one smiling at the Louvre,” insists Zapperi, “and she did not even know Julien de Médicis.”
TROUBLE OVER PERU’S MEMORY MUSEUM
Trouble is brewing over Peru’s project to create a “museum of memory” about the struggles waged between the government and guerrilla forces between 1980 and 2000. As Agence France-Presse reports, the commission to create the museum has complained of political-military “obstacles,” while some members of government, including the minister of defense, Rafaël Rey, are openly questioning the merits of the project. “There’s a lot of hostility coming mostly from recalcitrant sectors that are linked to the massacres,” says writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who presides over the museum commission. They “would prefer that Peru forget.” In the period 1980–2000, the conflict between the state and guerrillas of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement led to the death and disappearance of seventy thousand people. While a subsequent truth-and-reconciliation commission found excesses on both sides of the conflict, the Peruvian military has always rejected these findings. According to Admiral Luis Giampetri, the project’s difficulties stem from the Lima municipalities, which are reticent about offering a site for the museum of memory. The polemics intensified when the government, under President Alan Garcia, initially refused a two-million-dollar grant from Germany to cofinance the museum, only to renege on the refusal.
MUSEUMS OR RETIREMENT HOMES?
Denmark is facing some tough choices in the wake of the economic and financial crisis. Eurotopics cites a report in the daily Berlingske Tidende, which suggests that the crisis has led to some difficult questions about public spending. Suffering from less income and fewer sponsors, many Danish cultural institutions have been forced to ask for more state funding—an extra demand that is putting pressure on government budgets. “It’s unfair to say we have to choose between caring for culture and caring for the elderly,” notes the newspaper. “Nevertheless, the fact is that there is only a certain amount of money to go around. The difficult question that politicians and those involved in culture and the arts must ask is: Who should get nothing if every single theater or cultural institution receives the money they feel they’re entitled to?” In terms of theater, there seem to be more theater seats than people to fill them. “This is also an economic crisis, and the unfortunate fact is that not everyone can get what they’re asking for.”
Milan’s Grande Brera Museum projects are also moving sluggishly over in Italy—but according to a different set of political conflicts. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the “Grande Brera” project—the move to make Milan’s painting gallery bigger—has been under discussion for a good thirty years. Founded by Napoleon two centuries ago, the gallery urgently needs more exhibition space to show its permanent collection as well as special large-scale exhibitions. The latest attempt to revive the project comes from Mario Resca, a special commissioner for the Brera. A former manager of McDonald’s Italia, Resca is responsible in the Roman ministry of culture for the “valorization” of cultural heritage. Last week, during a visit to Milan, the culture minister, Sandro Bondi, promised to turn the Brera into the “Louvre of Italy.” Yet even without Resca’s efforts at valorizing Italian culture, the gallery has seen its visitor numbers expand rapidly, from two hundred thousand last year to three hundred thousand, although 2009 is not yet over. If only Brera could get the Mona Lisa back . . .
IMPACT OF INTERNET ON CULTURE
A new French study is tracing the impact of the Internet on cultural-consumption habits, from seeing movies to going to museums. As Le Monde’s Michel Guerrin and Nathaniel Herzberg report, the study—“Les Pratiques culturelles des Français à l’ère numérique, enquête 2008” (The Cultural Practices of the French in the Digital Era, 2008 Survey)—was directed by Olivier Donnat under the auspices of the national ministry of culture and is based on statistics compiled by an independent surveyor between 2007–2008.
The last such survey was done by Donnat in 1997, when only one in every five French households had a computer and less than 1 percent of the population were Internet users. Today—just more than a decade later—83 percent have a computer at home, while two-thirds of Internet users spend twelve hours online every week—outside work and studies. In the last survey, television continued to play a main role in dividing people between a lowbrow “domestic culture” of watching television at home and a highbrow “culture of going out” to concerts, museums, and theaters. Has the computer screen increased the television trend of staying put instead of going out? Not at all. “A new culture of the screen has appeared, which upsets the old postulates,” write Guerrin and Herzberg. “Internet users who go online every day are the ones who go the most to the theater, to the movies, and read many books. Even if overall, the younger and often ‘digitalized’ generations go less to the theater or museum, the baby boomers compensate [for these decreases by going more].”
Is the computer saving cultural institutions outside the home? Guerrin and Herzberg explain that the results are more complex than they initially appear. “On average, a young person spends two hours every day online. Up to four hours a day online, s/he will continue to go out a lot. Over five hours a day online in front of the computer screen, s/he will go less to the movies, less to the museum, less to theaters. Time is not extendable, even if young people today sleep less than before in order to get more things done.” The new computer-screen culture also allows people to cultivate themselves at home. Of those surveyed, 51 percent listen to CDs on their computers while 43 percent download music. This habit—in combination with the higher tendency to go out—has had a negative impact on the traditional practices of domestic culture. Watching television has decreased, as well as listening to the radio, reading books and newspapers, and going to the library, especially among the fifteen-to-twenty-four-year-old age group.
Another surprise: a boom in seniors. Whether retiring early (at fifty-five to sixty-four years) or retiring later in life (after age sixty-five), seniors are reaching out to arts and culture. According to the survey, their consumption of television and radio, which was already high in previous surveys, continues to grow. Clearly, the consumption of domestic culture does not suffice; the visits to museums, movies, and theaters are also on the rise in this generation.