Twenty-two works, including paintings and ceramic sculptures, are returned to the community. These are the works from the collection confiscated from Gennaro Mokbel – an entrepreneur linked to the far right – that the National Agency for Confiscated Assets, directed by Prefect Bruno Corda, has assigned to the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria. “It is a great satisfaction to add, so to speak, value to value, which is already here at Palazzo Crupi – commented the mayor of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria Giuseppe Falcomatà -. I thank Prefect Corda for this because he is continuing a path that began a few years ago aimed at the idea that art must return to being art and must be returned to full enjoyment by a much wider audience compared to what these works were reserved for, the result of criminal activities and proceeds”.
In the meantime, the works from the collection “that had been lent for the Trame Festival in Lamezia Terme have also returned to Palazzo Crupi. When we talk about confiscated assets, it is difficult to think of works of art – said the director of the anti-mafia cultural festival Trame Festival Nuccio Iovene -. In a month and a half, we have had over 1,700 visitors who have been able to admire the works from the Mokbel collection and those from the Campolo collection in an exhibition that has helped to raise awareness and promote the Palazzo della Cultura ‘Pasquino Crupì in Reggio Calabria and started a collaboration that we intend to continue and develop in the future”.
“This collection comes at a particular time for our Administration – stressed the Councilor Delegate for Culture Filippo Quartuccio – because it arrives almost at the same time as our participation in Trame Festival and at a time when the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria has joined the memorandum of understanding signed between the Ministry of Culture, the National Agency for Confiscated Assets and the Municipality of Milan for an exhibition that will start in October and will stop for a month in Rome and for three months in Milan. Our works leave this building to be visited and admired by everyone. This is the message: works that previously belonged to organized crime are now in the hands of an administration that has valorized them and now sees the time is ripe to take them out”.