Discovering Arte al Centro 2025, episode 4
Palazzo del Buongoverno

Seven centuries after Ambrogio Lorenzetti's frescoes on the effects of good governance, Cittadellarte inaugurates a new exhibition space in Biella dedicated to the community: the Palazzo del Buongoverno. The result of over thirty years of Cittadellarte's commitment to promoting art and culture as tools for social transformation, the new center was created to stimulate reflection, experimentation and collaboration between institutions, organizations and citizens, with a view to sustainable development and civic innovation. The Palazzo is an active body of Statodellarte also presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025. In this spirit, the Palazzo del Buongoverno is configured for the citizens of the Biella area as a common good, both material and immaterial, at the service of the future of the territory.

The palace will host the following exhibitions and activities:

Biella Città Arcipelago
Curated by Cittadellarte, Exhibition Design by Guardini Ciuffreda Studio

Biella Città Arcipelago, continuation and development of the innovative territorial laboratory that combines art, civic participation and collaborative planning born in 2019, finds a new home inside the Palazzo del Buongoverno. The project, the result of an alliance between numerous local organizations, gives shape to a Demopractic Work: an open and participatory co-creation system that promotes the sustainable development of the territory, with the support of public institutions. At the center of the initiative are six "thematic islands" (Educating Community, Mobility and Accessibility, Wool Landscapes, Living and Working in the Mountains, Health and Well-being, Food Agriculture and Hospitality), each committed to generating content and actions for change. The protagonists of the Archipelago recognize themselves in the territory, take care of it, manage it and promote a culture of Preventive Peace, understood as a conscious and relational practice. Biella Città Arcipelago is an invitation to act together for a more equitable, humane and shared future.
The Opera Demopratica Biella is one of the 10 Operas in operation in 2025, together with Havana (the first, started in 2015 and renewed every year since then); Geneva (2023 and 2024); Rome (2019 and 2025); Villa Manin/Gorizia/Nova Goriza (2024 and 2025); L’Aquila (2025); Busto Arsizio (2025); Seoul (2025), London-Liverpool-Edinburgh (2025), Brnec (2025).
The Spazio Arcipelago therefore comes to life inside the Palazzo del Buongoverno like a living organism, in continuous transformation. Not a static container, but a porous, changeable structure, capable of adapting and responding to the multiple functions and visions that this place hosts: exhibitions, meetings, moments of discussion and co-design.

The State of the Art

The State of the Art presents itself as a new dimension of human organization, a true State in which the freedom of art is the protagonist. Founded on the Formula of Creation – the inspiring principle of the Third Paradise – and on the Art of Demopraxy, it invites us to overcome conflictual dualism, transforming oppositions into harmonious and peaceful balance. It arises from the urgency of giving shape to a collective system that addresses the crises and inequalities of contemporaneity with creative and shared energy. The Constitution of the State of the Art, presented in Biella by Cittadellarte, is based on the awareness that peace is a continuous creation, the result of responsibility and the relationship between people and between nature and artifice. It is a collective work in evolution, which invites those who participate in communities of practice to become an active part of a truly participatory government, overcoming the limits of formal representation. With this gesture, Cittadellarte entrusts art and communities with the possibility of regenerating the present and the future.

U.R. - R.A. - Unity of Religions - Responsibility of Art, for a Preventive Peace
An exhibition curated by Cittadellarte with works by Michelangelo Pistoletto
(June 28, 2025 – December 31, 2025)

25 years after the inauguration of the "Lieu de recuillement et prière" at the Paoli-Calmettes Oncology Institute in Marseille - the first space to bring together the major religions - Michelangelo Pistoletto creates in 2025 the Interreligious Table for Preventive Peace, signed by eminent authorities of different confessions who met to develop new forms of interreligious dialogue through art.
U.R. - R.A. (Unity of Religions – Responsibility of Art) is both an exhibition and a venue for the project: the place where meetings and gatherings dedicated to dialogue between faiths through the language of art take place. The exhibition presents Pistoletto's decades-long journey linked to spirituality, using symbols and languages ​​agreed with all the participating religions. The exhibition itinerary is divided into emblematic works: Spazio Libero, a cage that stimulates reflections on freedom and borders; the Metrocubo d'infinito from 1966, surrounded by the text of the Tavola Interreligiosa; images of the Third Paradise installation in Abu Dhabi. At the center of the exhibition, a particular Third Paradise: a carpet in the shape of the infinity sign with a third central circle, on which the symbols of all existing religions are shown. The exhibition physically embodies the U.R. - R.A. project and its mission of interreligious dialogue through art, configuring itself as a model that can be replicated on other exhibition occasions.

Unity of Sports for Preventive Peace
An exhibition curated by Cittadellarte with works by Michelangelo Pistoletto
(June 28, 2025 – December 31, 2025)

“Competition is inevitable both in nature and in society. In war, victory leads to the elimination and death of the opponent. In sport, victory requires dual competition but leads to peace and the salvation of both contenders. Each participant in the sporting game gives the best of himself, the maximum of his strength, intelligence and cunning. This happens on both sides. In the end, victory is a contribution to the sporting and social progress that unites the contenders. In sport, war systems are used for peace. In the “peace game” field, the creation of each individual competes with that of every other individual respecting laws and rules that produce a dynamic balance and constant harmony between the people and the peoples of the Earth”. - Michelangelo Pistoletto
Michelangelo Pistoletto conceives sport as one of the fundamental tools that our society has at its disposal to promote Preventive Peace. Sports activities take on the strategic task of activating behaviors of cooperation, respect and solidarity in citizens. This reflection applies to all competitive sports, both team and individual, where the athlete is at the center of a comparison between external factors and his own technical skills. In these contexts, the athlete must adapt the sports performance to the specificities of the environmental context.
Sport marks an evolution of human behavior in the transition from a condition in which the conflict between the different factions was resolved through war, to another, in which the war conflict was mitigated by the competitive one. This mechanism of conflict containment, effective at a sporting level, offers a model potentially exportable to society as a whole, demonstrating how regulation, respect for rules and the sharing of common values ​​can transform a potential war into a constructive competition of constant, everlasting, inexhaustible peace. The playing field becomes a ritual stage where humanity is exhibited in its entirety, with its virtues and its defects. The exhibition opening at Arte al Centro contains a series of works created specifically by Michelangelo Pistoletto on the theme of sport.