ROME -- An ongoing scandal raged Tuesday over sexist remarks by the deputy culture minister and maverick critic Vittorio Sgarbi at the opening night of the Maxxi museum summer season. Sgarbi’s outburst consisted of sexist anecdotes and swearing resulting in the opening night of the museum’s summer season, on June 21, being marred by controversy.

 Sgarbi used a derogatory term for women during his speech and boasted about his many relationships with women:  “At a certain point, turning 67, the prostate appears and you have to deal with this fucking bitch whore you’ve never met in your life,” Sgarbi said, quoting, he claimed, a conversation he had with French novelist Michel Houellebecq.

 “The cock goes away and the prostate comes.” Consequently, Gennaro Sangiuliano, Minister of Culture, wrote to the museum’s president, Alessandro Giuli, demanding an explanation of the night’s bizarre events. Sangiuliano expressed his umbrage at the situation: "Cultural institutions, and I know that Alessandro Giuli agrees with me, must be open and plural but far from any form of vulgarity."

 A video of Sgarbi’s comments re-emerged last weekend in numerous reports in Italian media, including La Repubblica. This resulted in criticism from Italian politicians, including those in the current government of Giorgia Meloni’s, the Italian Prime Minister. On Sunday centrist senator Carlo Calenda remarked, regarding Sgarbi’s comments: “You don’t shock us, you bore us.”

 Sgarbi was a friend of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Sgarbi has had a long political career, featuring, amongst other positions, a brief role as an MEP, from 1999 to 2001, where he sat with the conservative European People’s Party’s group.

 When asked if there was a possibility he would be asked to resign, Sgarbi told the Corriera della Sera that asking for his resignation over “something like this” would be “censorship, true fascism.”

 When questioned by fattoquotidiano.it on Saturday, Sangiuliano was keen to insist that he knew nothing about Sgarbi’s sexist remarks. Sangiuliano added: "I have always and categorically distanced myself from sexist demonstrations and vulgarity, which I consider always and in every context inadmissible and even more so in a place of culture and by those who represent the institutions. Respect for women is a constant in my life."

 Giuli then intervened to "completely and wholeheartedly endorse Sangiuliano's remarks." Apologising "to the employees and staff of the Maxxi and to all the people who legitimately felt offended by an evening that was supposed to be on a different track," Alessandro Giuli explained that ‘profanity and sexism cannot have the right of citizenship in public discourse. So there is no room for any consideration that traces the pattern we saw in the inauguration of the Summer at the Maxxi,' he stressed.

 "It was supposed to be a free and gentle conversation between an artist and an undersecretary," Giuli added. But the discussion "took a different turn, in the face of which," the museum director concluded, "I tried, as far as I could, to contain the results of the possible discomfort that then ensued."

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