Speculation in art is taken for granted today and the art system often seems to have swallowed up art itself. Does art still have a higher purpose? What is it for in these troubling, dangerous times? Has it the strength to face up to the challenges of Trump and Trumpism, the failings of capitalism and the disaster the West has done so much to create in the Middle East, or was it always a fatuous, hubristic illusion that it could make much of a difference? The fourth and last of The Art Newspaper’s 25th anniversary “What is Art for?” investigations is taking place in the Vatican on 6 October. The director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci, will act as judge, as did the directors of the British Museum, the State Hermitage Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in the previous events. The witnesses for art have been chosen from outside the art world, so in Rome they are Carlo Majer, an industrialist and musicologist; Carlo Ossola, a historian and philologist; Paola Santarelli, an entrepreneur and collector; and Gian Antonio Stella, a leading commentator for the Corriere della Sera newspaper. The “prosecutor” is the anti-Mafia magistrate Francesco Messineo.
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