We will realize the national museum system: speaks Antonio Lampis, new director general of Italian museums

In recent weeks, Antonio Lampis was appointed as the new director general of Italian museums. We caught up with him for aninterview in which we asked him to briefly outline his program, and what ideas inspire him. Interview by Federico D. Giannini, editor-in-chief of Finestre sullArte, and Ilaria Baratta, editor-in-chief.

Antonio Lampis

FSA. Dr. Lampis, the first question can only be about your ideas for Italian museums. Do you already have some measures in mind, both for large and small museums?
AL. One of the most important commitments of the Directorate General for Museums will be the implementation of the national system of museums. Minister Franceschini’s reform has made the concept of the museum and the museum director present in the mental path of a great many people, bridging a nebulousness of the past that prevented museums from developing their full potential necessary to become a point of reference for the spiritual and cultural development of those who live around the museum and visitors from further afield. Now the concept of the museum network, indeed the system, envisaged by the reform is the consistent step toward a development path that now seems, to use Professor Baia Curioni’s recent words, unstoppable.

Approval for His work at the Province of Bolzano is almost unanimous, and the model applied in South Tyrol to grow interest in culture has attracted considerable attention. In a 2005 publication (“A Marketing for Culture”), You identified three key factors underlying this model: quantity of communication, breakdown of traditional modes of presentation, and interconnection of interests belonging to different audiences with each other. In your opinion, is this model replicable on a national scale, and in the museum sector?
I have always been convinced that social communication towards visitors especially potential ones is fundamental and that towards the new generations it is necessary to remodel certain languages,both in the arrangements,and in the apparatuses that lead people to feel emotions in front of the artists’ work and to learn something,those necessary to leave the museum with a recognized inner enrichment.

One of the first “grains” he will face will be the State Council’s decision on museum directors. What scenarios might open up in October?
Fortunately, the issue has already been brilliantly resolved in recent weeks. The Council of State ruled in favor of the eligibility of foreign directors and their permanence [editor’s note: the Council of State suspended the ruling].

Let’s talk about free Sundays: an initiative that has now become a fixture for many museum visitors, but has also attracted a lot of criticism. Is this a model that needs to be revised? Or is it a path to follow?
Any new path should be monitored and constantly made the subject of reflection. It is too early now to answer these questions, and I believe that an ongoing dialogue on this and similar issues is obvious.

Among the tasks of the director general identified in the ministerial decree is to develop guidelines for “communication” and “educational and technological innovation.” That of innovation is often a “hot button” in our museums: what new developments should we expect in this area?
Pier Luigi Sacco wrote buckle up and I am ready to go with tireless commitment and enthusiasm. On museum innovation, however, there are already significant insights from the Ministry and several new directors; my first duty is to listen at this early stage. The museum narrative, the contextualization of the works on display with the environments of their provenance and with the social and productive fabric in which they were conceived, certainly needs to be perfected. If one aims for a museum idea that is truly polysemous, it is crucial to often reinsert the works into the social and economic context from which they were taken. Those works that were in bedrooms, in churches, those works that represent food that maybe is still produced, those works that represent furniture that maybe a craftsman not so far from the museum is still able to make. The great Italian craft heritage is inside many of the works that we display in museums. Even today there is someone who makes those fabrics, even today there is someone who arranges fruit in the same way, a connection with the production system in my opinion is very important to speak to the visitor more effectively. So the possibilities of having museum stories related to the great productive heritage, the great legacy of the past that still survives especially in handicrafts is another of the channels to get a lot of history out of museums and reconnect it with today’s society.

The museums directorate is also concerned with international relations: in the past there has been much criticism for “exchanges” that have taken many works of art from Italian museums abroad, often for exhibitions dictated more by “prestige” reasons than scientific ones. Will this line continue, or is a model of international cooperation that disregards travel of works of art often subject to dispute possible?
By now nothing is exempt from contestation, alongside the more sterile ones there are some that help to grow. Public leadership and policy know d must engage on this very distinction.

As for internal cooperation, the Museums Directorate signed a few days ago a protocol with Federculture for the enhancement of the territory and the creation of integrated systems for the management of culture and tourism. Can we do more to make the link between museums and the territory stronger?
Certainly, I always say that we need to start with the people who live in the buildings around the museum. communication with the territory cannot only be inside but must above all go outside the museums using documentaries, radio, television, unconventional marketing, social media and even gaming, aware that the organization of knowledge and the new generations has a completely different cataloging from that of the past millennium.

One last question: You have shown a particular sensitivity to contemporary art. How do you see the relationship between Italians and contemporary art? And what will your direction do for contemporary art museums?
What the directorate will do is something to be discussed first with the minister and then with staff and colleagues. Contemporary art is often like college, you have to have gone through elementary school, middle school and high school to understand it. However, there are languages that convince our brains to go against its nature, that of stubbornly searching for what it already knows. Those languages, which also take advantage of emotions, are within everyone’s reach and it is important to know how to use them. Italians have relationship with contemporary art quite similar to that of the citizens of Central Europe, so much legacy of the past often distracts attention from the work of today’s artists. It remains an inescapable public task to continue to draw attention to the importance of the social figure of the artist, because yesterday and today, without the continuous work of artists there would be no cultural heritage. A great teacher of mine used to say to children visiting a contemporary art museum: you may not like this stuff, but you will not be protagonists of your time if you do not know it.

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