The directors of museums in Italy with recognized international careers but foreigners, whose appointment was encouraged in 2015 by the former Socialist Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini, they will not be renewed. From now on, to be the director of a public art gallery in the transalpine country, you have to be Italian.
Confirmation came this week from the Undersecretary for Culture, Vittorio Sgarbi. “Why do I have to appoint a foreigner to run the Uffizi Gallery? Have you ever seen a non-Frenchman in the Louvre?” asked the eccentric and always controversial art critic, right-hand man of Gennaro Sangiuliano, culture minister in Giorgia Meloni’s government.
Sgarbi, close friend of the disappeared Silvio Berlusconi, had already announced in January its intention to “change” the criteria for selecting candidates to run the major Italian museums, rekindling the controversy surrounding the management of a dozen Italian art galleries that are scheduled to be renovated in the coming months. “In particular, we are considering updating the composition of the commissions used to evaluate candidates,” he said at the time.
The current commission, the undersecretary assured, “was set up to respond to Franceschini’s reform idea aimed at opening the doors of large independent museums to foreign directors.” And he did it, naming many of them by name. In the next call for proposals we will consider commissions whose members are more closely linked to the area,” he added.
In fact, thanks to the ex-minister’s idea Dario Franceschini gives priority to the curriculum over the identity cardIn 2015, seven foreign experts – three Germans, two Austrians, one British and one French – were tasked with running some of the most important public art galleries in the transalpine country, along with another 13 Italians, most of whom have extensive international experience in the field dispose of cultural organizations of the United States or France. they all went selected in a lengthy selection process and reviewed by a commission of independent experts.
His election divided politicians and cultural managers in Italy because Franceschini’s “Revolution” opened the doors of some of the country’s most important cultural centers to experienced foreigners for the first time in art history, cultural management or archeology of recognized international standing, thus completing a phase of Italian dominance. The most noticeable change was the replacement at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, now managed by the German Eike SchmidtExpert in Florentine art, replaces the Italian Antonio Natalie.
The aim of the Meloni government is that when the current mandate expires in the coming months, the seven foreign directors can be replaced by Italian experts. The Secretary of State for Culture focuses primarily on the German Schmidt, but also on the historian Cecilia Holberg, who ran the Accademia Gallery, the other great Florentine museum where you can see Michelangelo’s David; British architect and museologist James Bradburne, located in front of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan; either Sylvain BellengerDirector of the Museum of Capodimonte in Naples.
The initiative of Sgarbi, known in Italy for his controversial interventions as a television talk show and his racist and macho statements, was restricted by the culture minister. “Foreigners must not be discriminated against. If they’re good, they should be able to work for us,” Sangiuliano explained, trying to quell the controversy.
“I respect the directors of the Uffizi and Pompeii, for example, and I hope that they can continue to work in Italy,” added the culture minister, stressing this In any case, they will be the exception and not the rule.
“The situation I found when we arrived at the government was unique. “The country’s 12 main cultural institutions were headed by foreign directors,” Sangiuliano explained. “I seemed an unbalanced relationship. Especially since it seems paradoxical to me, since many Italian universities are considered excellent worldwide for studying art history.