Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo: 30 Years of Art Celebrated at MAUTO in Turin
Thirty years old and not feeling them. Or rather: feeling every one of them—and turning them into a collective performance of art, colour, and celebration. That’s how the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo marked its 30th anniversary, choosing for the occasion a venue as symbolic as it gets: the MAUTO – National Automobile Museum of Turin. Among vintage bodyworks and futuristic visions, the museum transformed last night into a cinematic set filled with lights and conversation, where the elite of the contemporary art world—artists, curators, collectors, and museum directors—gathered for an invitation-only dinner stretching literally across the museum’s central hall. Among the guests, in addition to the guest of honor Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, who hosted the evening alongside her husband Agostino Re Rebaudengo, were Hans Ulrich Obrist, Arturo Galansino, Philippe Parreno, Doug Aitken, Tobias Rehberger, Guglielmo Castelli, Bruno Racine, Francesca Lavazza, Valerio Berruti, Giulia Cenci, Ilaria Tronchetti Provera, Vincenzo de Bellis, Simon de Pury, Maria Emanuela Bruni, Almine Rech, Thaddaeus Ropac, Ralph Rugoff, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Richard Armstrong, Glenn Brown, Magali Reus, Dakis Joannou, Bernard Blistène, Maria Manetti Shrem, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Martino Gamper, Enrico David, Nicola Ricciardi, Lorenzo Giusti, Francesco Manacorda, Vicente Todolí, the Mayor of Turin Stefano Lo Russo, and Member of Parliament Federico Mollicone, who presented Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo with a cultural medal from the Chamber of Deputies.
The tables—long, colorful, each marked by a distinct hue: red, yellow, green—formed an ephemeral installation. Between courses, a sudden apparition: a performance by Parreno with the young ventriloquist Nikolas Bushi, hovering between irony and hypnosis, like a coded message to the contemporary art crowd.
It wasn’t just a dinner, but a declaration of intent. The celebration at MAUTO coincided with the opening of News from the Near Future (on view at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and the National Automobile Museum until March 8), the exhibition marking the Foundation’s thirtieth anniversary and inaugurating a new chapter for the museum—one increasingly devoted to dialogue between disciplines, languages, and visions. Here, Paola Pivi meets Matthew Barney, Lara Favaretto crosses paths with Artur Żmijewski, and a century of mechanical aesthetics—from Futurism to the present—reflects itself in the polished steel of the twentieth century.
At the end of the evening, amid toasts and camera flashes, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo smiled: “This anniversary is not a finish line, but a new beginning.” And once again, Turin felt like the perfect city to shift into gear.
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
Photos: Ludovica Arcero
Who
