Fabio Mauri was an intellectual par excellence, and while the twentieth century all too readily supplied the subjects of his politically engaged work, it was the age of Enlightenment that provided him with a model of ethical responsibility. Although he was born into an extremely well-to-do family and thus able to observe his era without the compromises dictated by material need, his privileged background served only to heighten his sense of obligation. He became determined to act as a witness to his time with all its misfortunes as a sort of custodian of the world’s memory, a sentinel keeping

Can an exhibition structured historically extend its reach to the very recent past without losing its scholarly legitimacy in favor of offering a reflection on contemporaneity? Can it adhere to a sense of the present better than an exhibition focused on more recent work? The answers are yes and yes, as proven by “The Small Utopia. Ars Multiplicata,” promoted by the Fondazione Prada and curated by Germano Celant. Installed at the Ca’ Corner della Regina in Venice, this large-scale show reminds us that, in the modern era of art’s technical reproducibility—here defined as the period from the