Anna Detheridge, Director, Connecting Cultures, Milan

Engaging with the Environment: Italian art and the obsession with social space

The legacy of Italian mainstream art history is an underlying and understated point of reference for many contemporary Italian artists, a continuing influence both contradicted and sublimated. From Gianni Colombo to Piero Gilardi to Alberto Garutti to Lara Favaretto, human interaction in space constitute a very particular perspective which has endured over time. Piero Gilardi's interdisciplinary work influenced by the Italian founder of the antipsychiatry movement Franco Basaglia has had a pioneering theoretical and practical impact long before and quite independent of later practices defined as relational aesthetics.

Art theorist, curator and lecturer Anna Detheridge is the Founding Director of Connecting Cultures, a non–profit arts agency established in Milan in 2001 which is committed to inclusive, action research–based methods of working in the public realm. She was Chief Editor (1987-2003) of the Arts pages of Il Sole 24Ore and exhibitions she has curated include Public Art in Italy (Pistoletto Foundation, Cittadellarte, Biella 2003); INNATURA, X Photography Biennial (Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin 2003) and Village Global (Musée des Beaux Arts, Montreal 2004).