Time.news – “Dear Director, I learned from the press that on Monday 31 October the Uffizi Galleries would be closed thus preventing thousands of visitors from being able to visit them during the All Saints’ Bridge”. Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano to the director of the Uffizi Galleries Eike Schmidt.
“I understand – adds the minister – that in similar circumstances other museums and the Uffizi themselves have changed the normal weekly closing day in advance precisely to avoid inconvenience to visitors and tourists. I ask you if this reconstruction is true. If so, and I would consider it very serious, I would like to know why in this circumstance we did not proceed as in the past. It does not escape your intelligence – concludes the minister – that a closure of this type, in addition to constituting a loss of income, it represents a damage to image for the Uffizi Galleries and for the entire national museum system”.
“This morning I heard from Minister Sangiuliano, I will see him next week and we will take stock of the situation on all the big matches in the city” and about the closing of the Uffizi on October 31 “we talked about it, he was quite angry”. Thus the mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, during the ‘Telegram’ broadcast on ToscanaTv.
“As mayor – adds Nardella – I can only share the minister’s disappointment that during such an important bridge, for Florence and Italy it was a great resource for tourism and economy, visitors find the two main museums closed “.
“I would like to thank Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano for immediately intervening with great frankness on perhaps the most critical issue at this delicate moment for the state museum sector: that of the lack of personnel. For years, as director of the Uffizi, I have been asking for reinforcements from the ministrybecause the recruitment of human resources is not the responsibility of individual museums with partial autonomy, but of the central offices of the ministry. “The director of the Uffizi Galleries Eike Schmidt, replied to the letter from Minister Sangiuliano.
“After the stop due to the pandemic – adds Schmidt – this year Fortunately, visitors are returning impetuously, and again, the Uffizi are driving the city’s economy. This is also demonstrated by the numbers of this last All Saints’ Bridge, during which between Saturday and Tuesday 55,611 people visited the museums of the Uffizi Galleries. However, on Monday 31 October we were only able to open on Boboli Gardens, with 7,338 visitors who enjoyed the good weather, but not the gallery of statues and paintings and not Palazzo Pitti “.
“Like Minister Sangiuliano – he continues – I also find it very serious that the Uffizi and the Accademia Gallery were closed on Monday, and the Bargello even Tuesday 1st November, for the same serious reason, which is the serious shortage of staff in state museums. In recent years we have repeatedly sent reports on this issue to the higher ministry, but the problem has always worsened.
“Despite this situation, in the past years we have been able to offer numerous extraordinary openings on Mondays and in the evening to the public openings are based on the willingness of the staff to work more – and to be paid extra – on these occasions. However, a law introduced two years ago limits the extra earnings to 15% of the gross annual tabular treatment of each employee: for this reason this year we have been able to offer special openings with great success in the spring and again in the summer, but too many between the assistants in the room who willingly participate in these openings – in any case less and less, due to retirements – have reached or are approaching this limit “.
“We have also asked the Ministry in recent years – continues Schmidt – to be able to increase the service (paid for with museum funds) of the in-house company of the Ales Ministry, or to ban some parts of the surveillance service to an external company, but for both requests we received a negative response. Even the staff of the concessionaire of museum services can only integrate supervision with a number of support units, because the job description of that staff differs from that of state museum assistants. The hypothesis, which exists on paper, of moving the weekly closing day to Wednesday or Thursday has never been implemented at the Uffizi, because in such a complex machine that requires the interaction of many different companies (from electricians to metal operators, from the state support company to the reception concessionaire, and so on – with different staff and contracts – it has always proved impractical: but above all, with thousands of bookings also from travelers from other continents, planned for a long time time, already in place for all this week, the economic and image damage caused by an unusual midweek closure of the Uffizi Gallery would clearly have nullified the probable gain more than open Mondays “.
“I will send an extended report to the Minister – he concludes – but for the moment I assure you that I am just as scandalized as he is by these closures. Unfortunately, the problem of the shortage of staff is endemic concerns practically the entire national museum, librarian and archival panorama: it is now unsolvable without a clear and decisive intervention by the central part, which reverses the established practice in recent years. If the Uffizi Galleries can help move in this direction, they are ready “.