I’m committed to doing a talk in January, to the regional Italian Circle, on art and fascism in inter-war Italy. Yesterday I was able to get down to preparation, doing some preparatory reading. The obvious place to begin is Marla Susan Stone’s excellent The Patron State, and as I sat reading this afternoon I experienced a dreadful sensation of deja vu. She was describing the way in which the famous Venice Biennale was taken over and modified in the 1930s, and it all sounded dreadfully familiar. It was not the case that (as one might have expected) the new management was composed of dedicated political nominees, all committed to some fascist ideological concept of art. Not at all! They were industrialists brought in to “modernise” the management structures and financing of the organisation. Now, where have I heard that before?
It all sounded dreadfully reminiscent of the fate of British universities since the 1980s, during which time leadership by senior academics has been replaced by management by business people. For some reason there is in government a rooted belief that only people with business backgrounds know how to organise anything. Reading recently the story of British military involvement in the war in northern Italy towards the end of the Great War I was absolutely staggered by the tremendous logistical competence within the military, and subsequent enquiry has confirmed this. It certainly is not the case that administrative competence is confined to the realm of “business”, and often people working is that field are distinguished by their incompetence. As anybody working in British universities will tell you these days, the area is a disaster zone under “business” leadership. There is an excellent article in the current edition of the London Review of Books analysing the way in which, in the spirit of efficient management, various “metrics” have been introduced to evaluate performance in education, and how statistically illiterate they are. It might be possible to learn from history …. but it seems we never do.
On a happier note, the technical problem I wrote about yesterday turns out not to be as serious as I feared. When I got my work into a good light it was clear that a little re-touching was all that was needed to rectify the problem. Even so, this is a matter I will attend to very carefully if I work with this medium in the future. Actually, looking at the series now, I’m quite pleased with it.