“Luca Massimo Barbero has two qualities in particular that I feel must be mentioned,” says Cini Foundation Secretary General, Pasquale Gagliardi:
1) “an organisational capacity, clearly based on competence but also on the ease with which he relates to colleagues, collaborators and counterparts in other institutions;
2) and his cultural background, an indispensable requirement in working in the many varied fields of art history (cataloguing, archive management, conservation and safeguarding materials), which are essential for a grand, distinctive institution like the Cini Foundation.”

“I'm honoured and excited about the appointment which I will take up and pursue with a sense of responsibility, aware of the wealth of the great tradition of studies at the Cini for which I see lines of continuity and further developments,”comments new director Luca Massimo Barbero. “The Cini is an island pulsing with knowledge, thanks to the wealth and marvels of its archives. It's a reference point for our city and a beacon for scholars worldwide, who respond to its international signals every year.”


Luca Massimo Barbero
Born in Turin in 1963, he moved to Venice where he graduated in History and Criticism of the Visual Arts at Ca’ Foscari University, under the supervision of Prof. Giuseppe Mazzariol in 1988.
His career was immediately characterised by commitments to both art curatorship and the academic world in institutional and teaching appointments. He collaborates with the chair of Art History at the Venice Accademia di Belle Arti, the Accademia di Belle Arti Pietro Vannucci, Perugia, the Department of the History of Architecture in the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV) and the degree course in Economics and Management of the Arts at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice.
Through his studies on Veneto art conducted in Venice with professors Pignatti and Polacco he acquired a deep knowledge of the relationship between ancient art and its regional setting. In his collaborations with various international museums and institutions, he has consequently often tackled the theme of the relationship between tradition and the contemporary. In this role, he has taken part in numerous projects involving ancient art and its relationship with the contemporary world.
In 2002 he became the first Italian to work as an associate curator at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. In this position he developed a network of relations and events in Italy and abroad, which led him to increasingly significant, regular contacts with the international art museum scene.
From March 2009 to June 2011 he was director of the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (MACRO) in Rome; he was thus responsible for the museum in Via Reggio Emilia during the completion of the new wing in Via Nizza, officially opened to the public in December 2010.