"The longer I'm involved in this the more bizarre it seems,'' said Meier, who accuses Alemanno of animosity toward the arts.

And this nugget from Culture Minister Sandro Bondi:

"It's really difficult for me to find beauty in contemporary art,'' said Bondi in an interview in the current issue of Italian women's magazine Grazia. "If I visit a show, like many people I pretend to understand. But sincerely, I don't understand.''

I have to say that if i was the Culture Minister of any country I would make it and important part of my job to understand contemporary art. I may not like it - but I would know how to talk about it in a critical, informed manner - and not just say "I pretend to understand". This is shameful - I hope that something was lost in the translation of this quote.

Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government plans to tear down part of a Rome museum designed by U.S. architect Richard Meier, Corriere della Sera said, citing comments by Culture Undersecretary Francesco Giro.

A travertine stone wall at the Ara Pacis museum will be removed to facilitate viewing of two historic churches in the same square that houses the 2,000-year-old Mausoleum of Roman Emperor Augustus, Giro said yesterday at the museum, according to the report. A section of another travertine wall connected to the museum also will be knocked down, he said.

Giro said Roman Mayor Giovanni Alemanno agrees on the plan, and a joint meeting between the mayor's office and the Culture Ministry will be held in September or October to discuss technical issues, according to Corriere.

The Meier-designed museum was inaugurated in 2006 and houses the Ara Pacis, an altar constructed in 9 B.C. to commemorate the peace following Rome's Gallic and Spanish campaigns.

Photo courtesy of and copyrighted by World Architecture News, and Mahalie & Uglynoid

Mary Lou Bunn, a communications spokesperson for Richard Meier’s office said, “things have been quiet” (since the announcement was made). She added that Meier “is willing to talk to the Mayor” about the matter and that “people at the firm are very attached to the project.” Ms. Bunn said that the Italian daily, the Corriere della Sera, had polled its readers about the matter with the results being that somewhere near 70% of respondents want the building to stay.

As I stated earlier, I think the odds of anything happening to this museum are close to zero. It is simple populist politics to make statements like Alemmano did, which the Italians are quite good at. At the same time, the article quotes a poll by Corriere della Sera showing that the "people" want the building to stay. There are other papers in Italy that if polled would probably show the opposite.

Alemanno praised a district south of Rome, which Mussolini built as a symbol of fascism, calling it an example of “architecture that was part of the modernisation process and gave importance to Italy’s cultural identity”. The EUR district’s monumental style, built for an international exhibition that was abandoned because of the war, was modelled on that of ancient Rome.

After living here for a few years you start to understand the Italians fascination with Mussolini - but it is a false hope, based on nostalgia and selective memories (the trains ran on time, the modernizing of the infrastructure, etc.). It is much like the American Right's fascination with the post WWII boom and the longing for the "good old days" of a dad that worked and a mom that stayed home and baked cookies. These are just cultural myths - and even if they were real for a moment in time, they were eventually unsustainable. Instead of looking to the past we all should be looking forward, but as always, it is easier to blame others and long for better things than to roll up your sleeves and actually do something. Shipping 20,000 Romanians out of Italy isn't really going to stop the problems in Rome.

"The famous American architect Richard Meier has denounced as incredible plans by Rome’s new right-wing mayor to dismantle a state-of-the-art museum designed by Mr Meier that opened just two years ago.

The white marble, glass and steel structure housing the Ara Pacis, an ancient Roman altar with a sculptured frieze on the banks of the Tiber, is regarded by some architectural experts as a masterpiece. Others, however, find it hideous, with some critics dismissing it as being “like a suburban swimming pool or a giant petrol station”. Silvio Berlusconi, whose centre-Right alliance won a sweeping victory in national elections last month, once described it as monstrous.

Gianni Alemanno, a member of the “post-Fascist” Alleanza Nazionale who overturned decades of centre-Left rule in a run-off election on Sunday and Monday, said bluntly that “Meier’s building is a construction to be scrapped”. He added that this was not his” top priority”, leaving the timing of the demolition unclear."

More here.

Dissonanze, the festival for electronic music and multimedia art returns to Rome for the eighth year...

The 2008 edition of Dissonanze will also involve new spaces. The historic and architecturally acclaimed PALAZZO DEI CONGRESSI and L’AUDITORIUM PARCO DELLA MUSICA (which last year hosted the great Karlheinz Stockhausen: first and foremost) will remain this year – but another extraordinary space, the museum of the ancient l’ARA PACIS, will be added to the list.

The above is from BERLINISTA.

Contemporary Italian artist Mimmo Paladino and music legend Brain Eno have a new, site specific exhibit at the Ara Pacis Museum:

This event, which could well be described as long-awaited, is the second time that these two indisputably important contributors to contemporary culture have worked together; the first being almost ten years ago in 1999 at London’s “Round House”.

I can't find many details about the exhibit at this point - I am hoping there is some more coverage once it opens. From 11 March to 11 May, 2008.

"A shot of Paladino's work near the ancient altar, and the sign outside the building. No cams allowed in the actual show."

"The contemporary fetishization of this moment in history comes from a desire to remember Rome's one-time value and, in turn, anticipate the return of this value. The construction of this new museum is a direct act of myth-making. This agenda is clearly mapped out in the ichnography of the building. The fear of fire, or at least the institutionalized residue of a fear of fire, presumably truly felt by someone at some time but we don't know who, introduces a second logic with a second ichnography. This system is laid out over the first system, using the architecture as its starting point. In this interplay between the two logics, two hands are obviously at play with two different agendas."

Don't know if I agree with the premise - but I will be sure to take note of the fire extinguishers on my next visit.

"The Ara Pacis presents the most important surviving programmatic statement of the middle years of the Augustan principate. Recent scholarship has focused on the identity and significance of the altar’s children, but progress has been constrained by assumptions about Augustus’ dynastic ambitions. The altar reflects the political realities and ideals of the year 13 B.C.E., when adult generals were in ascendance, foreign children took center stage, and the political prospects of Gaius and Lucius Caesar were still uncertain."

And travelers are rediscovering the Ara Pacis -- the first-century "Altar of Peace" built by Emperor Augustus to kick off the Pax Romana. It's wonderfully displayed in a state-of-the-art exhibit housed in a starkly modern building -- the first new construction in Rome's old center since 1938.

I love to hate this guy - from the TV show to the books to the armies of people that mob places he recommends, but then I read a very surprising interview of him that has made me soften my view - a bit. More after the fold.

Lee Azus alerted me to this in his store (Get Lost's) October newsletter as follows:

"October, 2007

Store Notes
I had never been a Rick Steves fan until now. For over twenty years I had thought of Rick Steves as an effective, if corny, salesman. I liked, yet resented his products: He made Europe much more accessible for those who a generation ago would have been intimidated by the idea of traveling independently and on a budget around the continent. His guides are not complete. He highlights his favorite regions and omits others. However, the places he does cover, he covers extremely well. I would say too well. The little treasures I have found over the years through word of mouth or good fortune have inevitably turned up on Rick Steves' pages. A charming family-owned hotel on a peaceful square in the Marais district of Paris that I found while wandering the neighborhood in 1993, eventually showed up in his Paris guide. His books include towns, neighborhoods, hotels and restaurants that might have been better left obscure and off-the-beaten-path. The rue Cler in Paris is known as rue Rick Steves due to the sheer number of his readers who stay in over twenty recommended hotels in the neighborhood. But beyond that, as well as his group tours of Europe - a contradiction of the basic idea of independent travel - was an assumption dating back to the post-war era of American entitlement to all that Europe has to offer. I remember sitting through one of his " Europe through the Back Door" seminars in the 1980s thinking, 'What if the local you are encouraging us to chat up just wants to be left alone?'
Imagine my surprise, then, when I read an interview that Rick Steves gave in mid-September to The Seattle Times on the subject of "travel as a political act." Steves admits that he once believed that the world was a pyramid with the Americans at the top and that he 'could just share with people all the beauties of American culture.' But he doesn't believe that anymore. Now he believes that America is ruled by fear and the flag has been hijacked by war mongers. He thinks the best thing the world could do for peace would be to fund a program that sent every American upon graduation somewhere abroad for six weeks. The idea being that you are less likely to fear what you know. Steves is even on the NORML's [National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws] board of directors. It was so refreshing to hear someone go beyond the usual platitudes about cultural exchange and building bridges among peoples.
If you go to his website you can read Rick argue that $100 billion is more than enough to fund defense and that it is time to fully fund education, environmental protection and parks.
It does nothing for Steves' bottom line, except potentially hurt it, for him to write this about the American military budget: 'Spending half our nation's discretionary budget on the military while stripping down our society and reshuffling wealth into the richest families is a tough sell. And it gets tougher and tougher. It requires fear (an enemy as big as communism — like terrorism), a distracted dumbed down electorate, and a narrowly held media. A government looking out for the little guy only gets in the way, so a disdain for government in general (and taxes in specific) must be sold to the populace.' Don't expect to hear anything like that from the publishers of the other big guidebooks. In the meantime, the next time you take a look at Rick Steves' books, know that a person with integrity stands behind them.""

And:

BETTY UDESEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES "... Right now, an America that is threatened by, fearful of and misunderstands the rest of the world is a costly thing on this planet," says Edmonds-based travel writer Rick Steves.

The world according to Rick Steves
By Mark Rahner
Seattle Times staff reporter
"Travel as a Political Act" may sound about as bourgeois as Yachting for Peace.
But Rick Steves says that after Sept. 11 he wanted to talk about more as a travel teacher than just finding bargains. Hence his above-titled speech Thursday at Town Hall. Drawing upon his three decades of experience abroad, the travel-guide guru and left-leaning host of "Rick Steves' Europe" on PBS will talk about how we understand our own country better by leaving it.
I went through the front door of Europe Through the Back Door, Steves' travel office in Edmonds, to find out more about this subversive anti-ignorance ploy of his - and ask some intrusive personal questions.
Mark Rahner: When you bring up "travel as a political act," you won't be talking exclusively to prospective shoe-bombers.
Rick Steves: (Laughs.) When I talk about travel as a political act I'm talking about how travel can change your perspective in a way that when you get home, all of a sudden you're more difficult to con.
MR: I think of boycotting Thailand because of the child-sex trade, but that's nothing new. What are you adding to the issue?
RS: I'm saying when you travel, you find smart people who would not trade passports. You have people who are ethnocentric like you and I are, but they find other truths to be self-evident and God-given.
MR: Such as?
RS: Slow service is good service, instead of fast service is good service. Tolerance of alternative lifestyles. I think in Europe they've learned that society has to make a choice: you can tolerate more alternative lifestyles or you can build more prisons. And they always remind me how good we are at incarceration. We're four percent of the planet with more than a quarter of its prisoners.
MR: How about some do's and don'ts? I'll go first: If you're traveling in India, don't make a stink because you can't find an Arby's. Your turn.
RS: If you're traveling in India, don't assume you know what pain and love and the value of time is.
MR: I have to think about that one, but I'll take another turn. If you are a famous Scientologist, stay out of Berlin.
RS: If you're a famous rock star, don't hang a baby out the window in Berlin. When Americans go to the Brandenburg Gate ... it frustrates those guides, because all they want to know is "Which balcony did Michael Jackson hang his baby out on?"
MR: Don't you think the teen beauty-pageant finalist's incoherent answer about why Americans can't find America on a map says all we need to know about our ignorance of the rest of the world?
RS: (Laughs.) I love that, too. That clip would not surprise people - not even in Europe, in the developing world. It's not a fair example of an American, but you can make a case that we think we're a hub and everything relates to us. And the rest of the world interacts with each other, with or without America, which I think is real interesting. One of the most poignant moments I had last year was in Morocco, looking at a beautiful square in Tangier realizing these are successful affluent people going places and they neither emulate America or dislike America. America doesn't even enter into their awareness. And I thought that's a beautiful thing.
MR: You're suggesting actually learning about a culture before invading it? I mean traveling to it.
RS: Yeah, I'm saying if everybody traveled before they could vote, we would not be outvoted in the United Nations routinely 130 to 4. We would not go into wars alone. We would work better with the rest of the planet.
MR: What have you observed first-hand to be the effect of the Iraq war and our current foreign policies on the way people treat American travelers?
RS: People in most countries know from first-hand experience that you can elect a person that's an embarrassment, so they cut us some slack.
MR: We don't have to see Europe through the back door now because they hate us?
RS: No, they don't hate Americans. People love Americans. Some people go over there and want to put their judgments on other people to tell them how to do things right. Europeans don't need other people to tell them how to do things right and wrong. And they don't take very well to it. As long as you go to a country with a wide-open enthusiasm and an open mind and an interest in giving some of their ways of living a whirl, they love to have you visit. ...
MR: Tell me more about your speech Thursday.
RS: I'm going to share examples of the value of travel broadening your perspective and how important in a post-9/11 world that is. Because we live in a society that's using fear as a tactic to confuse us, and powerful people profit from our confusion.
MR: How does travel help?
RS: If you travel to Iraq you'd be less likely to bomb a wedding party just because one guy in the crowd was tall. I've traveled across the Middle East. I've traveled in Kurdistan in eastern Turkey and Afghanistan, and it changes the sadness of being able to look at a bombing like a video game.
MR: Are you recommending then that Americans travel in the Middle East?
RS: I think if the world knew what was good for it, it would establish a fund to pay for Americans all to have a free trip for six weeks, anywhere they wanted around the world upon graduation. It would be the best investment the world could ever make. Because right now an America that is threatened by, fearful of and misunderstands the rest of the world is a costly thing on this planet.
MR: You serve on NORML's [National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws] board of directors and advocate the decriminalization of marijuana. My question to you: What's your favorite snack food?
RS: (Laughs.)
MR: Answer the question!
RS: Answer the question! My favorite snack food! Triscuits are fun to eat.
MR: With nothing on 'em?
RS: You can decide if you want to eat them with the grain or against the grain. That takes a little while.
MR: Do people who buy your travel books and watch your show ever find your marijuana advocacy incongruous? Or do they say, "No wonder he recommends grabbing uneaten food from other people's cafeteria trays!"
RS: Ha. Most people haven't put together what of my writing and my business might have been inspired from smoking marijuana. I mean, when you're overseas and you decide to go local and you're a travel writer, you take careful notes.
MR: You've cultivated a trademark look which I've heard described as "The Winkerbean."
RS: Really?
MR: Really. Do you think business would fall off if you switched to contacts?
RS: Oh, that's interesting. I've got to do TV shows where I'm looking no more out of style than I was at the time 10 years later. I don't want to make a fashion statement because it'll make a show more dated than it needs to be. But I don't have much of a fashion sense anyway.
MR: Consistency is comforting.
RS: Yeah, when I sit down at the Mexican restaurant 200 yards from here for lunch, I never order. They just bring me the same lunch I've had for five years.
MR: Which is what?
RS: Chicken tostada and cranberry juice. So I get enough variety on the road, when I come home I would rather wear the same clothes every day and not concern myself with that.
MR: Aren't you successful enough now that you don't have to follow your own advice?
RS: I could forget all the budget tricks and just spend as much as I like in Europe, but I honestly believe fundamentally the less you spend the more you experience.
MR: When I was studying abroad 20 years ago, students were advised not to wear American-looking clothing or symbols, and not to be loud, because it was likely to draw trouble. And more than once, people who overheard my accent in bars felt free to walk over to the table and start arguing. Are we back to that?
RS: Other people don't walk around with T-shirts that say "Proud to be Norwegian." It's inconceivable that a Norwegian or a Belgian or a Portuguese person would walk around with a T-shirt that says Proud to be Norwegian or Portuguese. Americans walk around with T-shirts that say essentially "America, love it or leave it." "America, right or wrong." "God bless America." When somebody to me says "God bless America," I think, well what about everybody else? I would advise people not to wear an American flag, because the American flag has been hijacked. It doesn't symbolize America anymore. It symbolizes an American war around the world. That's not my opinion. That's what it means when people see that. That's changed a lot lately, and that saddens me.
As far as Americans talking loud, we're notorious for talking loud, and that's just a matter of simple sensitivity to foreign cultures. If I'm on a train car with 40 people and I can hear one conversation, it's invariably an American conversation. And I almost feel like getting up and saying "Gee guys, listen to everybody else here, there's 40 people on this train. We could all be enjoying some peace and quiet, but we're all listening to your conversation. It's just classic American cluelessness when it comes to living in densely populated areas.
MR: What's the most clueless thing you ever did in a foreign country when you were an inexperienced traveler?
RS: I used to think the world was a pyramid with us on top and everybody else trying to figure it out. And I really traveled believing I could just share with people all the beauties of American culture, and I don't believe that anymore. I like my way of living, but I don't think that other people want to copy it.
MR: When I got to a fishing village in the north of Scotland, an embarrassing situation ensued because I wasn't aware of their meaning of "shag."
RS: Oh yeah. Well that happens all the time. If you ask for a napkin you can get a tampon. I'll never forget how shocked I was when a man at a bed and breakfast tapped on my door and said "What time would you like to be knocked up in the morning?" I used to always ask for leche caliente in Spain - that's hot milk - until somebody told me that's local slang for sperm.
MR: Hello!
RS: I didn't order it like that anymore. And for years as a tour guide I would call myself a "capa gruppa," which is a female tour guide [in Italian]. And people just understood I was a tourist struggling with the language.
MR: But you said they're more tolerant of other lifestyles and they might have assumed that you were ... Politeness abroad always makes sense. A man in a bar in Scotland once asked me, "Do you want a fag?" And I said, "Uh, no thank you," unaware at the time that he was offering me a cigarette.
RS: Actually faggots are meatballs in South Wales, which sometimes needs some explaining.
MR: That guy from "Grey's Anatomy" may have been thinking of that.
RS: "Fanny" is a vagina in Australia.
MR: Making fanny packs horribly awkward. Staying out of the country long enough to settle into the vibe somewhere showed me how oblivious American travelers can be.
RS: When you say Americans are oblivious, what you're saying is Americans have not had the opportunity to leave our country and look at our country from a distance and get to know another culture. That's just a matter of lack of experience. What I try to do is get people to travel in a way that takes advantage of that experience to let them better understand the world, broaden their perspective through travel, to look at America through French eyes.
I mean, for America to say that the French are surrender monkeys really shows what little we know about the French. Half of all their men between 15 and 30 were casualties after WWI. They lost as many people as we lost in the Vietnam War, many times on a single day. And they have one quarter of our population. There's a country that knows what war is like.
America, frankly, doesn't know what war is like. We don't have many living memories right now of what a serious war that the Europeans have experienced is. Consequently, we've sanitized it. And Europeans have many more powerful reminders of how war can devastate a society. Consequently they're inclined to find alternatives to war a little more aggressively than we are.
MR: So you were against freedom fries.
RS: Ha! I was appalled that people were pouring out good French wine! I was appalled that people were not eating Mr. French's Mustard thinking that was a French thing, when Mr. French was, I think he's English or something. It has nothing to do with France. There's people that just, as I said, they have not had the opportunity to travel. If I grew up in some middle American state and never left the country, was surrounded by people that never left the country, I would be scared to death of Muslims. I'm not scared to death of Muslims.
My daughter just spent a month in Morocco living in a village, having a life-changing experience as a 17-year-old, and she knows that people in Morocco regardless of their religion get out of bed in the morning, and they just want to live a good life. They have no ideas in their mind to hurt America. They like our music. They don't like our wars. They want to be left alone. They don't dress up with their whole heads covered up. They look just like our kids. They have different religious traditions.
MR: So mere exposure to Islam reveals that Muslim fanatics are about as exceptional as Christian fanatics?
RS: Exactly. I mean if all you know about Islam is what you've learned from American media, it's not much different from what Muslims have learned about Christians from Al-Jazeera.
MR: You and I in Amsterdam for a weekend. How's it play out?
RS: It's fun to go to a coffee shop. You've got to find a coffee shop that's comfortable for you. You want the right ambience. You want for you and me - well, for me I'd want an older crowd. Wouldn't want so much tie-dye and dreadlocks and piercings.
MR: Is that how I strike you?
RS: No, I don't know. I'd want a mellow sort of older crowd at a coffee shop. We could go to the Van Gogh museum, that'd be pretty cool. It could pan out a lot of ways. I don't care to tell you what I would do. I'd probably be working so hard that I wouldn't get high.
Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

Just a snippet from an excellent, concise article from the Guardian about the new Gagosian gallery in Rome.