Area museums launch petition to Franceschini: "MiBACT also helps non-state museums"

A petition to ask the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to help non-state museums: it was promoted by the Fondazione Musei Senesi, Musei di Maremma and the National Association of Houses of Memory, which are addressing Minister Dario Franceschini with a request to support and relaunch non-state museums in the so-called Phase 2 of the Covid-19 emergency.

The petition is the second moment of a journey that the promoters started last April by launching an appeal to Franceschini to ask him not to forget the museums of the territory, small but important realities to maintain an active role in the presidium and dissemination of culture. The petition has already collected 350 signatures.

There are three requests that the adherents are making to the minister: the identification of concrete support measures aimed at non-state museums; a greater incisiveness of the value of these places in tourism promotion campaigns; and an evaluation about the extension of VAT exemption from all museum services, a facilitation until now limited to educational activities and guided tours only.

“With this appeal,” the promoters explain, “non-state museums intend to reaffirm their role as a social, cultural, economic and tourist resource of the country and hope that in this situation they will be duly considered in support and revitalization measures. Our museums, spread also in the so-called minor centers, represent, together with state institutes, the backbone and capillary structure of Italian cultural places, through a network that unites North, Center and South in an extraordinary fabric that joins traditions and landscape. An overall weak network, which over the years has resisted amidst a thousand difficulties and is now even more at risk, also in view of the crisis that has befallen the local authorities that often own and bear the costs. If this network were further impoverished, communities would lose their principals of reference, schools an educational resource, young people a professional opportunity, and tourism a lever of attraction; all of us a source of civic pride and collective identity. Now little is needed to deal these museums and their networks a death blow, but little is also needed to make a crucial contribution to salvation instead. All the museums are working in these weeks to reopen to the public, taking security measures, with an increase in expenses to which, we fear, will be matched by a decrease in attendance due to mobility and physical distancing.”

It is possible to sign the petition by signing it directly on the Change.org platform or on social media (Facebook and Instagram), of the three sponsoring organizations: the Fondazione Musei Senesi, Musei di Maremma and the National Association of Houses of Memory, or even at www.museidimaremma.it.

In the photo: the Etruscan Museum of Vetulonia

Area museums launch petition to Franceschini: "MiBACT also helps non-state museums"

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