Senate culture committee OKs Buttafuoco appt to Biennale

(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 14 - The Senate culture committee on Tuesday gave its backing to the appointment of cultural and political journalist and writer Pietrangelo Buttafuoco as the new chairman of the Venice Biennale Foundation, replacing Roberto Cicutto when the latter's term ends in March.
    "Buttafuoco is a professional with huge multifaceted talent, attentive to innovations in the cultural sector at an international level and to the young and future generations," said right-wing League senator and Committee Chair Roberto Marti.
    "I am certain that a person of his stature will also perform this important role with the utmost commitment and responsibility, enhancing the artistic peculiarities of our country in the world," he added.
    Buttafuoco, 60, was named in October by rightwing Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano and the opposition claimed the appointment was a sign of a continuing rightwing takeover of key cultural posts like state broadcaster Rai, which the government says is a traditional part of Italy's spoils system.
    Premier Giorgia Meloni's rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party said the appointment marked the "breaking of another glass ceiling", at a body where leftist placemen and cronies have allegedly traditionally been appointed.
    The eclectic Buttafuoco, one of Italy's top public intellectuals and a practising Muslim, was a far-right activist in his youth like Meloni, but both have since espoused more traditionally conservative or rightwing positions.
    Buttafuoco, indeed, writes for leftwing daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, a fierce Meloni critic, and another liberal daily that staunchly opposes the premier, La Repubblica, as well as for centrist daily Il Foglio and business daily Il Sole 24 Ore.
    (ANSA).