The participants at this national roundtable noted, by way of opening premise, that the luxury and high-end markets represent a worldwide business worth 730 billion dollars. The sub-segment of personal luxury goods – valued at 230 billion dollars – sees Italy and France as joint market leaders, each having a share worth more than 50 billion dollars.
The opening premise of this National Interest roundtable was that although Italy boasts a cultural heritage without equal, it is unfortunately not exploited to best advantage through a uniform and identifiable strategy actually capable of generating economic benefits comparable to those produced in other countries despite having a much poorer cultural offering.
The indestructible bond between art and the economy needs to be forcefully reiterated today, even at such a tough time for the global economy and for Italy’s economy in particular.
The opening premise of this ASL session was that Italy’s cultural heritage and tourism resources are capable of offering great development potential if certain strategic issues are resolved. In particular, it was stressed that heritage assets must be harnessed as a lever for wealth creation, tourist offerings need to be upgraded, and most importantly, there needs to be a renewed focus on the pivotal relationship between development and infrastructure.
This Aspen Junior Fellow Breakfast event saw the participants make a concerted effort to examine the individual challenges facing Italy through a broader frame of reference. It was noted that the long-term inertial forecast is one of a country that is aging and characterized by increasing levels of immigration, a widening North-South divide, the persistence of a detrimental public deficit, and insufficient productivity to maintain the level of prosperity hitherto achieved. This outlook, it was observed, feeds into a longstanding rhetoric of decline and defeat that is rife in Italy.
Roots in the plural, put together like a mosaic of contributions and meanings that are sometimes even at variance: the foundations of Italian culture, it was suggested at this roundtable discussion, cannot be otherwise described. Formed from a diverse array of knowledge, customs and learning, Italian culture has over time developed a pluralistic unity.
The discussion at this roundtable session got underway with the incisive observation that managing and exploiting a vast and valuable cultural heritage requires a well-thought-out cultural policy, and a continual balance to be struck between preservation and economic development, between making use of this asset and ensuring it is not “used up”, and between the conservation of ancient artistic works and nurturing contemporary art.
Identity is a word that has multiple connotations. Paradoxically, there is not just one but many kinds of identities, whose characteristics, origins and development processes are quite different from one another. Individual identity, for example, is often brought into question at the very moment it is affirmed: Saint Augustine explains that sense of doubt in fact characterizes the fundamental moments in one’s life. The ego becomes aware of itself by a process of elimination: I am all, minus that which I am not.
The discussion in this session focused on the role of culture in the wake of the global crisis. In this regard, the participants highlighted the increasing search for a more harmonious, sustainable and forward-looking social model, yet one that is anchored in the roots of national identity. With the global crisis, this quest for a new kind of paradigm of development has, even in Italy, once again focused what perhaps was otherwise languishing interest on the crucial importance of “culture”.
The participants in this roundtable discussion observed that in order to debate the issue of culture and its link with society (hence, with the places where culture exists or is showcased) and with businesses (those in a position to fund cultural initiatives and make them possible and accessible), an understanding of what “culture” means is vital. Indeed, it was observed that the concept of culture is polysemous.
The seminar got underway with the participants recalling that when Charles De Gaulle met André Malraux in the aftermath of the Second World War, he said to him, “D’abord le passé”, meaning that a sense of history enables each of us to look back at the past to find our way out of a current critical phase and work towards building the future.
