Three months into the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum's CAM Art War, the Neapolitan government has created a "cease fire" by sending a letter to the museum confiscating the collection on legal grounds.
Citing a 2004 legislative decree allowing the government to take endangered artworks into its protection, superintendent Stefano Gizzi of the Naples cultural affairs office called for museum curator Antonio Manfredi to remand the museum's 878-piece collection into state care. Manfredi has been publicly burning pieces of CAM's collection to protest government cuts in art budgets.
As the legislative decree cited by Gizzi explicitly exempts works of art made by living artists and executed within the last 50 years, the regional director of cultural affairs in the Campania region, Gregorio Angelini, sent a follow-up letter the next day negating Gizzi's demands because the legal precedent didn't apply.
The 2004 decree does allow the government to seize artworks of exceptional value, so the CAM Art War is on hold until further communication from the Neapolitan cultural affairs office clarifying the status of the collection.
Gizzi's initial letter, which describes the museum's collection as an important and prestigious collection of international value, has in part already accomplished Manfredi's mission to gain governmental recognition of the worth of his museum's collection and collaborate for its protection.
Manfredi is in Salzburg this month curating CAMouflauge Salzburg, a collection of photographs revolving around the appreciation and destruction of art, at the Mirabellgarten Galleries.
