This guide is a useful tool for visitors and contemporary art enthusiasts; it provides a comprehensive list of contemporary art centres in Italy, indicates new fields of specialised research, and presents potentially new itineraries of contemporary art venues. This book provides information about public and private museums and similar institutions, foundations, and publicly financed permanent exhibition venues open to the public; all these venues have been surveyed, selected and classified according to criteria and methods which, although different, are all based on the approach and unitary logic adopted by the study. The 2012 edition is an innovative tool and not merely an updated version of the previous edition published in 2003. Its premise is based on the increasingly important role played by contemporary art in Italy in recent years together with the already consolidated reality of Italian heritage.
The policies of the Directorate General for the Landscape, Fine Arts, Architecture and Contemporary Art implemented in the Plan for contemporary art are intended to provide more in-depth and comprehensive information regarding their status in modern society and the role they play in creating Italy's cultural identity, a role expressed fully in the dialectic relationship between architecture - as well as art - and the country's historical, environmental and landscape heritage