2023-08-31 01:38:15
The directors of museums in Italy with recognized international careers, but foreigners, whose appointment was promoted in 2015 by the former Social Democratic Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini, will not be renewed. From now on, to be director of a public art gallery in the transalpine country it will be necessary to be Italian.
The confirmation came this week through the Undersecretary of Culture, Vittorio Sgarbi. “Why do I have to put a foreigner in charge of the Uffizi? Have you ever seen a non-French in the Louvre?” asked the eccentric and always controversial art critic, right-hand man of Gennaro Sangiuliano, Minister of Culture in the Government of Giorgia Meloni.
Sgarbi, a close friend of the late Silvio Berlusconi, had already announced in January his intention to “modify” the criteria for selecting candidates to take charge of the great Italian museums, once again unleashing the controversy surrounding the management of a dozen art galleries. Italian, whose renewal is scheduled for the coming months. “In particular, we are thinking of updating the composition of the commissions called to judge the candidates,” he said then.
The current commission, assured the undersecretary, “was born to respond to Franceschini’s idea of reform, which sought to open the doors of the large independent museums to foreign directors. And he did it by naming many of them. For the next call we will think of commissions whose members are more closely linked to the territory”, he added.
In fact, thanks to the idea of former minister Dario Franceschini to give priority to the curriculum over the identity card, in 2015 seven foreign experts were appointed – three Germans, two Austrians, one British and one French – to direct some of the main public art galleries. from the transalpine country, along with 13 other Italians, most of the latter with extensive international experience leading cultural organizations in the United States or France. All of them were chosen through a long selection process and examined 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 poles for the first time to foreign experts in art history, cultural management or archeology of recognized international prestige, closing thus a stage of Italian domination. The most striking change was the change in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which came to be directed by the German Eike Schmidt, an expert in Florentine art, replacing the Italian Antonio Natali.
The objective of the Meloni Government is that when the current mandate of the seven foreign directors expires in the coming months, they can be replaced by Italian experts. In the spotlight of the Undersecretary for Culture are above all the German Schmidt, but also the historian Cecilie Hollberg, who since 2015 has directed the Accademia Gallery, the other great Florentine museum, where you can visit Michelangelo’s David; the British architect and museologist James Bradburne, who is in charge of the Brera Art Gallery in Milan; or Sylvain Bellenger, director of the Capodimonte Museum 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 qualified by the Minister of Culture. “Foreigners should not be discriminated against. If they are good, they should be able to work for us,” Sangiuliano declared, trying to quell the controversy.
“I highly respect, for example, the directors of the Uffizi and Pompeii and I hope they can continue working in Italy,” added the Minister of Culture, while stressing that they will be, in any case, the exception and not the rule. .
“The situation that I found when we arrived at the government was unique. The twelve main cultural institutions in the country were run by foreign directors,” explained Sangiuliano. “It seemed like an unbalanced relationship to me. Above all because it seems paradoxical to me since many Italian universities are considered excellent in the world for the study of art history”.
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