LA ‘SWINGING BARI’ (1964-1975) E IL DIBATTITO SULLE ARTI. Adriano Prandi, la Pinacoteca Provinciale, la Mostra dell’Arte in Puglia dal Tardo Antico al Rococò

If we had to identify a significant fact to understand what was happening inside, around and outside the Institute of History of Art and Archaeology, founded in Bari in 1947 by Adriano Prandi, it could be fixed precisely in his contribution to the reopening of the Art Gallery located on the third floor of the Palazzo della Provincia, overlooking the Lungomare Nazario Sauro. This ‘container’, in 1964, hosted the Exhibition of Art in Puglia from Late Antiquity to Rococo, thus marking a decisive change of pace for the museum after its first inauguration in 1935. The new course had been announced since September 1962 with «an original exhibition», not better specified, the organization of which was entrusted to Michele D’Elia, assistant and favorite student of Prandi, in agreement with Mario Salmi, then president of the Higher Council for Antiquities and Fine Arts. In a Bari already following a certain idea of modernity, thanks to the innovations introduced, between public and private spaces, by designers such as Vittorio Chiaia and Massimo Napolitano trained in the United States, opportunities also began to be de"ned, for a debate on the cultural infrastructures of the city, permanent and/or temporary, but always of a certain historical-artistic matrix. It is not only a question of the Provincial Art Gallery, but also of a new possible National Gallery of Modern Art for which, in 1967, thanks to the commitment of Prandi, personalities such as Raaello Causa, superintendent of the Gallerie della Campania; Guido Perocco, director of the International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice; up to Palma Bucarelli, director of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. #e debate continued until at least 1975, and was resolved not only with Prandi’s experience at the University, but also with a period that then ended, in spite of itself, in 1978 with the kidnapping and killing of perhaps the most famous Apulian of the 20th century, Aldo Moro, repeatedly prime minister from 1963 to ’68 and between 1974 and ’76, thus consuming - on the so- called ‘Night of the Republic’ - the false myth of Bari as the ‘Milan of the South’.