Who doesn’t want to exhibit the statue of the breastfeeding woman in Milan, and why? This work of art which portrays a bare-breasted woman breastfeeding her baby is causing a lot of discussion. “From mother’s milk we come” is the title of the bronze monument, which has become of discord, which the family of the artist Vera Omodeo would have liked to donate to the city so that it could be displayed in a square, in particular the one dedicated to another woman, Eleonora Duse.
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Statue of a breastfeeding woman: the commission of the Municipality of Milan does not want to exhibit it. Sala’s embarrassment and the bipartisan protests
But the specific commission of the Municipality, responsible for evaluating works of art to be included in public spaces, rejects the proposal unanimously because, as we read in the minutes, «the sculpture certainly represents respectable values but not universally shared by all citizens, such as to discourage its inclusion in public space».
And he suggests the family donate the statue to “a private institution, for example a hospital or a religious institute, within which it is the theme of motherhood was given greater emphasis, expressed here with exquisitely religious nuances.”
Words that trigger bipartisan controversy from the center-right, but also from the Democratic Party which represents the majority in the city council. Even the mayor Beppe Sala is surprised by the decision and promises that he will ask «the commission itself to re-examine the issue, at least listening to my opinion because I don’t think it offends any sensibilities. It seems a bit of a stretch to say that it doesn’t respond to a universal sensitivity.”
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And he also agrees with him the Councilor for Culture Tommaso Sacchi according to which the statue “does not offend anyone and we will consider giving it a location”. Those of the municipal commission «are surreal motivations – the artist’s daughter explains on the phone to ANSA, Serena Omodeo who wanted to pay homage to their mother and all women by donating the work, with the collaboration of the female toponymy association -. We don’t care about locking her up, there are only two statues dedicated to women in the city and this one was also created by a female artist. Furthermore, a partially naked woman doesn’t seem like a religious subject to me at all. Thanks to the mayor and the councilor if they manage to find a place for the work.”
However, politics attacks, on the right and on the left, with Silvia Sardone, MEP of the League, who explains how “a mother holding a child close to her chest cannot offend anyone with even a shred of brain”. While the Democratic Party with councilors Alice Arienta and Luca Costamagna underlines how «motherhood as a choice of love and freedom is an asset to be protected and valorised. It is not by erasing the figure of motherhood that women are helped.”
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