Franco Marrocco returns to lead the Brera Academy. This was established by the result of the third round of elections, which ended on Friday. In the first two Marrocco, 68 years old, professor of painting and former director of Brera from 2012 to 2018, had always been ahead, but had not reached the absolute majority of preferences required by the regulation. In the third round, however, the relative majority and the former director were enough he prevailed over his opponent, Filippo De Filippi, with 105 votes against 45. Ten blank ballots and eighteen void ballots, one with the symbol of anarchy written on it.
De Filippi, a professor of stagecraft, had also stood for election ten years ago, against the current director, Giovanni Iovane, whose mandate will end on October 31st. DMarrocco will return to office on November 1st who, when contacted, does not currently make any statements. Even Iovane limits himself to “congratulations” to his successor (and already predecessor). From the management offices comes the hope “that the projects started in recent years will continue and reach completion”. And it is not difficult to imagine that the lack of desire to speak is due to the poisonous climate in which these elections took place.
While the polls were still open, an accusation of alleged sexual harassment against one of the two candidates came like a bolt from the blue. A teacher put it forward, who wrote to hundreds of colleagues, inviting them not to vote for him and telling about alleged harassment suffered firsthand, as well as other episodes that were allegedly told to her by some students. Episodes never reported before – she explained – to protect the name of the Academy. Very serious accusations which have spoiled the electoral atmosphere and created a rift in the teaching body.
It’s a delicate moment for Brera: two games are being played, that of obtaining research doctorates and that of the construction of the Arts Campus at Scalo Farini, where some specialty schools today located between Milan and the hinterland would be located. Two points that are in Marrocco’s electoral programme, who thinks of Scalo Farini as “a place that is the center of a new artistic vitality in step with the demands of contemporaneity and the near hyper-technological future”. But his goal is also that Brera returns to being “the point of reference for the rest of the Italian academies”.
