INTERVIEW: FIFA Museum Director
Plus: Divorce heats up Sotheby's bank balance
Hello - especially to the 12 new subscribers since the last edition on Friday!
Hot off the press: Ed Sheeran has recorded a few songs at the Centre Pompidou, for some reason.
Hot in your inbox is my latest interview. In this edition I speak to Marco Fazzone, Managing Director of the FIFA World Football Museum. I believe this is this newsletter’s first interview with a museum director outside the UK so I’m stoked to mark this exciting milestone in its growth. I chat to Marco about the Museum’s newly announced collaborative exhibition which aims to bring all 211 nations of FIFA together.
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Now let’s jump in!
Maxwell
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barometer
What’s heating up and cooling down in the world of museums, art and galleries this week:
going up
Divorce is big business - at least for Sotheby's. The auction house saw their most valuable sale in their 277-year history in New York, all thanks to the hugely bitter divorce of real-estate billionaire Harry Macklowe and his ex-wife Linda. The evening’s total take was $676.1m, and new records were set for works by Agnes Martin and Jackson Pollock. It happened because a court ordered the auction to divide their assets as part of their “nasty” separation. Incredibly, this was only part one of two sales to sell off their art collection. Sotheby's can expect another divorce dividend in May 2022.
going down
Time is clearly not always of the essence with some news reporting. Yesterday the first news articles were published revealing that London’s Museum of the Home IS considering moving its statue of Sir Robert Geffrye, who profited from slavery, from the façade of the Museum after all - despite originally deciding not to due to an intervention by the government. But this reporting came just a mere FIVE days after the museum first tweeted it out. To be fair, the density of the original statement doesn’t exactly look like it was designed to garner much attention.
curated
My curated list of what’s new to see, do, watch, read and more, from across the globe.
NEW EXHIBITION
Ancient Greeks: Science and Wisdom at the Science Museum, London
Step back through millennia in a free exhibition to discover how the ancient Greek civilization questioned, contemplated, and debated the natural world. Rare and historic objects never-before seen in the UK take visitors on a journey from the mysterious depths of the sea to the wonderous night sky. Opens today. Visit sciencemuseum.org.uk
NEW EVENT
Tate Tap Takeover at Tate Modern, London
Celebrate South London brewery Drop Project’s collaboration with Tate Modern. They take over the taps to launch “Haze”, Tate’s Yayoi Kusama inspired New England IPA. A soft, juicy session-able beer that uses Mosaic, Citra and Azzaca hops with an addition of citrusy Yuzu. Meet the team and enjoy 6 more of their beers. DJs bring the vibes. Wednesday 24 November, 18.30–22.00. Visit tate.org.uk
NEW EXHIBITION
Damien Hirst: His Own Worst Enemy at White Cube Hong Kong
A solo exhibition by Hirst, featuring sculptures from his acclaimed Venice installation, ‘Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable’ (2017), which have never been seen in Asia before, as well as a new series of paintings made in his London studio. Opens 24 November. Visit whitecube.com
interview
“Our vision is to develop the biggest collaborative global exhibition on football heritage and culture – made by football lovers from the entire world”
The FIFA World Football Museum opened in 2016 in the heart of Zürich. It has one of the world’s best collections dedicated to international football and it explores the global nature of the beautiful game and the role it plays in people’s lives both today and throughout history. But it wasn’t cheap. With a reported $563m price-tag, its early visitor figures were seen as disappointing for such an expensive project.
But a new Director appointed in 2018 has been turning the museum’s fortunes around. Marco Fazzone joined the institution from the art world, having held positions at Art Basel and the Swiss Museum Group. Visitor figures have slowly crept up, and last month they announced one of their most ambitious projects to date. ‘211’, the Museum’s first collaborative exhibition, invites all 211 FIFA Member Associations from around the world to share a distinctive object that reflects on their respective unique football cultures. It’ll open in 2022 ahead of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. I caught up with Marco to find out more about the exhibition, how they’ll ensure the women’s game is represented, and who his money is on to lift the World Cup next year.
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Where did the idea for 211 come from?
When our visitors enter our permanent exhibition in Zurich, the first thing they see is a huge “Rainbow” of shirts from all 211 FIFA Member Associations. It’s fascinating! Wherever in the world the visitors come from, everyone can find their national team’s jersey. Behind each shirt – symbolically speaking – stands a unique football history, culture and identity. Football fans love it. It’s our mission to reflect on all of them, bring them together and thereby show the diversity and beauty of that one global cultural phenomenon that is football. Now we want to dive deeper. We want to show objects that perfectly stand for each unique football identity – selected by the ones who know their respective culture best, by the FIFA Member Associations themselves. Our vision is to develop the biggest collaborative global exhibition on football heritage and culture – made by football lovers from the entire world.
What are the Museum's ambitions for the show?
Our biggest ambition is to showcase a collection of objects and their stories that makes every visitor feel the magic of football and the passion for the beautiful game as it is lived and loved in all regions of the world. We dream of being able to share the content with every football lover on the globe and to engage with them. This is priceless! Of course, we are well aware that we can only achieve this through digital ways of exhibiting and showcasing content.
How will you ensure the women's game is well represented in the exhibition?
First, we strongly believe that quite a few FIFA Member Associations will send us women’s football related objects that perfectly reflect on their unique football culture. Why? Because in some regions of the world, women’s football is already more popular than men’s football. And in some countries, women’s football had been a popular sports even before men’s football. And secondly, we will ask the Member Associations to think of both – a cultural object from the women’s game as well as from the men’s game. A good balance is absolutely important for us!
If you had to put a 212th object into the exhibition, to represent the FIFA World Football Museum itself, what object would you pick?
Thank you so much for this wonderful question! I would say, it would either an object from a referee in order to symbolize the neutral part in every football match on the pitch between two teams. Or it would be the “Rainbow” of all 211 shirts next to each other – not sorted by the amount of World Cup titles, or the current position in the world ranking, but purely by the rainbow colours. When you stand in the centre of the “Rainbow”, a feeling of love and passion for the game at the same time as an understanding of how big and global football actually us, comes up inside everyone. It makes every visitor’s eyes shine. That moves my museum team and myself many times every single day!
You established the annual International FIFA Museum Conference, and the second (virtual) edition just took place. How did it go?
For this year’s FIFA Museum Conference, and for the first time, representatives from all 211 FIFA Member Associations were invited. We hope to develop this forum to become a lively network for national football museums, cultural initiatives and experts in the fields of football culture, heritage, education, social responsibility, diversity and sustainability. Participants from over 60 different countries joined in. What a milestone! It was wonderful to see how this conference is growing. We had some big personalities from the museum and cultural world to deliver key note speeches and our learnings were clear: We need to grow together, collaborate as much as possible and set football museum standards in a joint effort. We are on track, but we are still only at the beginning – and there are so many more wonderful things to do together!
What is the Museum's relationship with FIFA?
We are FIFA’s passionate, lively and inspiring platform for football heritage and culture for all people to meet and to learn and to share emotions, memories and opinions. The FIFA Museum AG is a subsidiary of FIFA. We work closely together when it comes to welcoming football legends or staging events as part of our cultural programme at the museum. However, we curate our content with our own exhibitions & heritage team.
The Museum's visitor numbers have been reported to be lower than expected since opening five years ago, and they took a further hit due to the pandemic. How would you assess the visitor numbers? Any specific plans to grow them?
Before the FIFA Museum opened in February 2016, very ambitious expectations in terms of visitor numbers in Zurich were announced. The first two years showed that they were too ambitious for a start. When I joined in 2018, it was clear from the very first day that we would need to develop, grow step by step, focus on content and storytelling as well as on our institutional responsibility for football heritage and culture on a global level. We increased our visitor numbers for three consecutive years, from 118,000 in 2017 to 161,000 in 2019. Due to Covid-19, we could not further increase these numbers in 2020. However we are looking forward to further developing new digital exhibition formats and hope to reach out to even more football lovers worldwide in the future.
Finally, Qatar 2022. Who's your money on?
Ah, please don’t expect me to answer this question - I will have to disappoint you! And this brings us back to the 212th object, right? We are the FIFA Museum, we are like the referee, we are always neutral – we want to be, and we need to be. What I can say is: I hope to see new history-making moments at the next FIFA World Cup. New national teams celebrating their first-ever appearance at the tournament. New teams from different continents reaching the semi-final for the first time. Seeing how football becomes more and more truly global.
211 opens at the FIFA World Football Museum in 2022. Find out more here.
and finally
Art on TikTok is direct, intimate and confessional says the Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones.
Looking for some new artwork for your living room? Leading creatives platform Creative Boom has just launched its own online print shop.
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