"Ministry's challenge? Growing smaller museums." Alessandra Guerrini (Museums Liguria) speaks.

“The challenge is to grow the smaller museums, to make them the hubs on the territories of the National Museum System.” This, according to Alessandra Guerrini, head of the new Regional Directorate National Museums Liguria, is the main goal of the latest reorganization of the Ministry of Culture that led to the creation of the new Regional Directorates of National Museums (DrMn). And to achieve it the extra gear, compared to the similar intentions that accompanied more than a decade ago, in the Franceschini era, the creation of the then museum poles, should be ensured by the financial autonomy that is being recognized for the first time. The latter also represents, in a sense, a “test” to measure the level of administrative responsibility capacity of the directors. While on the one hand, the advantage of retaining and redeploying receipts from asset management activities, such as entrance fees, concession fees, various paid services, etc., makes it possible to speed up procedures related to accounting or receipt of funds from private individuals; on the other hand, management through budgeting involves great complexity.

As with the other directors heard so far, Fabrizio Sudano for Calabria, Valentina Uras for Sardinia and Filippo Demma for Basilicata, Guerrini also does not know the reasons (there is “no programmatic document on the matter”) that led to the distinction between regional directorates that remain independent, dedicated to an entire region, such as Campania, Lazio and Lombardy, and directorates that are under as many autonomous institutions, as in Umbria, Puglia and Emilia Romagna. This is done by hypothesis. For Guerrini, “the general logic is to create smaller and more manageable networks,” which also share (lacking) personnel, for which it would be useful “the contribution of the regions to support them.” By the way, yet another renaming of “hubs” with the addition of “national” also served to avoid the misunderstanding that museum directorates are regionally based state branches, and not precisely institutes of the Regions. Where the use of the word “national,” and not “state,” is clearly intentional, since the two terms, although often used interchangeably, have different meanings.

Liguria starts at an advantage in this scenario, since it was already connected to the region’s autonomous museum in the figure of a single director. Thirteen sites, including museums, galleries, castles and archaeological sites, from the Royal Palace of Genoa to the National Gallery of Palazzo Spinola; from the “Balzi Rossi” Prehistoric Museum and archaeological area of Ventimiglia (Imperia) to the National Archaeological Museum and Archaeological Park of Luni (La Spezia); from the Fortress of Castruccio Castracani and Fortress Firmafede, both in Sarzana (La Spezia) to the Castle of San Terenzo (La Spezia), are part of DrMn Liguria. Network optics, then, even if the confrontation between directors, as revealed in the previous interviews (but also in those of the survey on autonomous museums), is mostly left to the informal initiatives of individuals.

MS. Among the novelties introduced in 2014 by the Franceschini reform, “regional museum poles” immediately proved to be the weak points of the ministerial reorganization. In your opinion, what were the critical aspects of those structures?

AG. They were structures built to be the same but in reality very different; some, in the larger and more heritage-rich regions, put together dozens and dozens of museums, while others, in smaller or less heritage-rich regions, more reasonably brought together a small group of museums scattered across the territory. All the hubs however put together assets that were very different from each other, from the parish on top of the hill to the large castle, from the small archaeological area in the countryside to medium, large or very large museums such as the Cenacle. Assets that had been managed up to that time by the three different specialized Superintendencies and thus came from often different management systems and institution cultures that had to be harmonized. An institution’s memory is long, and such a change took years to metabolize. Add to that the fact that while autonomous museums received significant financial allocations for their operation, this was not the case for regional hubs, which are rich in valuable museums that form the widespread fabric of Italy, but unable to sustain themselves.

Has anything then changed in 2019 with the “regional museum directorates,” beyond the new wording?

In substance, I would say no.

What is the reason why there is now a diversification between directorates coinciding with a region and others aggregated to autonomous institutes? And in what does the difference consist?

Granted that I am not aware that any programmatic document has been made public in this regard, and that therefore we proceed by deduction, the DrMn still coincide with the territory of the Regions, only that some contain all the State museums, while others contain only the “residual” ones after others have been aggregated to one or more autonomous museums. In the case of Liguria (and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Umbria, Marche and Molise) the DRM, which contains them all, was already linked to the region’s autonomous museum in the figure of a single director. Thus, aggregating them through a single budget was easier than most of the other changes envisioned in the current reform. The general rationale, which I broadly agree with, is to create smaller and more manageable networks. To read the differences within the various aggregations one would have to analyze them in depth, but there is one very important commonality, budget autonomy, which allows for much better planning of spending and thus work.

The aggregations, then, occur exclusively with non-general management level museums or parks. Is there a reason why DrMn have not been combined with the “stronger” first-tier autonomous institutes?

Except in special cases, there would be too great a jump in scale between a first-tier museum and those spread across the territory. Already that between the second-tier autonomous museum and the single smaller-scale asset is often considerable. The challenge right now is to grow the smaller museums, to make them the hubs on the territories of the National Museum System, to open them more and more and make them come alive for citizens while also performing the task of diversifying tourism. Let’s not forget that there are often no state staff in sometimes very peripheral places, and often keeping them open is not easy. It makes more sense, in many cases, for the very peripheral museum to link up with local museums, forming small networks in this way as well (and in this sense the contribution of the regions to support them would be crucial). Not least because first-tier museums very often come from dynastic collecting, while area museums may have quite different histories.

Will the mergers also be useful in generating economies of scale by sharing services, instrumentation, professional expertise?

Certainly yes, although this virtuous path in the regions mentioned earlier, including Liguria, was certainly already active before. For example, we used the far greater resources of the Autonomous Museum (Palazzo Reale in Genoa) to do an exhibition that brought the history of Luni, the most important site in the DRM, to Genoa and to national attention.

In this network perspective (if effective) are there moments of exchange, such as technical tables convened with some regularity, among you directors to compare different experiences? Replicate successful ones, solve common problems or share models and planning?

Lately there have been moments of confrontation especially on the issues of PNRR spending, which involves all of us and is very complex. Otherwise, we frequently talk to each other informally.

What do you think will change with the new autonomy compared to the past? Specifically, from a financial point of view.

With budget autonomy, there is a change in the planning of spending, which becomes much more agile, and can be spread over the entire year, rather than from April-May to early December, as is the case with traditional state accounting systems. Receiving contributions and sponsorships, or reusing income, is much simpler, although management through budgeting obviously also has great complexity. The fact remains that the great push given to autonomous museums in recent years has made them grow a great deal in all respects: not only have visitors increased, but also all the cultural production that takes place within museums in the most varied forms. For the smaller museums to grow with the same momentum, it is necessary for them to be financially endowed more significantly than they have been so far, and for all aspects of their operation, so that the initial endowment will then act as a driving force for growth and thus at least partly for self-support. However, these are difficult times for public budgets, and we do not know how much this hope can be realized.

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