Carrara Since yesterday, and for the next three years, therefore in June 2027, Professor Marco Baudinelli is the director of the Academy of Fine Arts. The official appointment decree has in fact arrived from the Minister of University and Research, Anna Maria Bernini. The new, but all in all expected, fact is that Baudinelli’s mandate is three-year, therefore it starts from yesterday’s appointment, as explicitly written by the minister, and therefore does not end with 2026, as was instead hypothesized in the last announcement of the election of the director, after the pronouncement of incompatibility of the director Silvia Papucci. Professor Papucci had been elected for the three-year period 2023-2026, last February the TAR ruling declared her ineligible due to seniority issues; then when president Antonio Passa reopened the vote, he spoke, as he always said, of the three-year period 2023-2026. Now, however, Professor Baudinelli faces a full mandate.
Yesterday morning he finally took up his role as director (obviously he has always continued his teaching activity), and, he admits, his diary is full: «Of course – he explains – I know the Academy well and I have already been director from 2003 to 2011 , but here at least four months have been lost, since the February ruling, but I would say even a year, because even before last year’s vote we knew, and we said it in every way, that there was an ineligibility problem. However, now we look ahead, there are many emergencies. First of all, the priority is teaching, we are a school and teaching is the key point. Then there are the structural issues, with respect to the state of the main headquarters and the branch offices. Today I take service and from today we face the problems.”
Then there is the triad for the new president to be appointed, given that Professor Passa’s term of office is expiring. «The trio – recalls Baudinelli – is indicated by the Academic Council, which the director chairs and convenes, with a specific agenda». Within a few days, it seems to understand.
In short, a tiring chapter is finally coming to an end, which has effectively kept the province’s highest cultural institution paralyzed for months. It was May 31st when the TAR decreed, after yet another appeal, that the bis elections of April 22nd and 23rd should be considered valid and which had seen 24 votes assigned to Baudinelli. It took almost another month to get the ministerial appointment. Immediately after that ruling by the TAR, Baudinelli stated: «A process of legality has finally concluded. Now the important thing is to calm the environment, I will convene the teaching staff, in short, the return to normality begins. The centrality must be on teaching and students. And I would like to thank the CGIL for supporting me in this battle, especially in the person of Isa Zanzanaini, my great lawyer Isetta Barsanti Mauceri, the dozens of personalities who expressed solidarity with me.”
And in fact, the big winner of the game is the lawyer Isetta Barsanti Mauceri, who with great determination and ability has always held her ground, with appeals to the TAR and the Council of State, but also with warnings and complaints (both to the Prosecutor’s Office and to the Court of Auditors).
Returning to Baudinelli, in his electoral programme, a year ago, he had written among other things: «It is necessary to put the statutory body which has the task of directing the other bodies in their functions. I’m obviously talking about the Teaching Board.” And again: «Years ago, a laboratory equipped with robots and 3D scanners was activated with the awareness that our “primacy” in sculpture had to be preserved by updating it with the most advanced production technologies. This laboratory has been abandoned for a long time in a space that has become a warehouse for various materials. Regardless of what led to its current state of abandonment, I believe it is important to get this laboratory back in motion.” He then suggested resuming the process to have the five-year course in Restoration of Stone Materials approved. Another idea is to plan, in agreement with the Municipality of Carrara, the Tuscany Region and other institutional and non-institutional entities, a new edition of the Carrara Sculpture Biennial in a broad sense open to students from all over the world.
And what about the large Pnrr project “Com, City Open Museum” worth four and a half million, of which the Carrara Academy is the leader? Baudinelli reflects out loud: «We will necessarily have to make careful assessments, and above all if as a structure we are able to manage and report a project that involves many Academies».
