Major work at the Accademia Gallery in Florence. Major renovations to the building kick off in July

Major construction works at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence will begin in July: the museum, home of Michelangelo’s David, will in fact undergo major architectural-structural consolidation and restoration work, as well as plant renewal with the aim of improving the museum’s functionality. There will be restoration works to the Hall of Colossus, with an intervention on the eighteenth-century trusses (which are heavily deteriorated and uneven), to the Gipsoteca Bartolini, and also extraordinary maintenance operations on the systems of the Tribuna del David and the Galleria dei Prigioni. For these worksites, priority has been given to issues concerning protection and conservation in addition to the health and safety of people and property on display, so the greatest efforts have been concentrated on the plant and structural front, with particular attention to the air conditioning system, the malfunction of which has been complained about for some time.

The work will also involve the Gallery’s lighting system, with LED floodlights, which will properly illuminate the exhibited works, with special reference to conservation, energy saving and decreasing heat emissions. In addition, projects to enhance the museum environment and improve its enjoyment, with the construction of the new entrance, are also already in place. Signage will then be redone, which to date is inadequate is almost nonexistent. The new visual identity of the museum will be presented on July 1.

Some urgent interventions will be started in advance of the others in order to gain time: in fact, in July we will start with the replacement of one of the Fridge Units, which will be followed by a very complex intervention on the accumulation tanks of the air treatment units of the rooms on the second floor. Following this, in order to allow work to be carried out when the work on the Colossus trusses is completed, the new system in the Colossus Hall will be designed, and extraordinary maintenance operations will be planned for the systems serving the David Tribune and the Prison Gallery. Urgent and unavoidable interventions of both a plant engineering and structural nature are interconnected and their implementation will only be possible following careful planning and organization. The work is being carried out thanks to Carlotta Matta, an architect officer of the Academy Gallery since 2018, and Gennaro Miccio, an engineer, Single Project Manager and former Piedmont Regional Secretary.

“When I was appointed as Director of the Accademia Gallery in Florence,” says Cecilie Hollberg, museum director, “I took on important, unexpected and certainly not always easy responsibilities. For more than three years, we have been working so hard and on so many fronts, including the necessary retrofitting of the building I have been assigned, challenging work that does not always make a scene and even less visible. Upon the arrival of our young and excellent architect Carlotta Matta, on our staff for only a year, I unloaded to her about 20 files, studied and followed by me personally, in the absence of staff, in the previous two years. Since our architect did not have the seniority for these works, I looked for and found a RUP (Responsible Unico del Procedimento) in faraway Piedmont, engineer Gennaro Miccio, who has been serving the Cultural Heritage for forty years. Without his great experience we surely would have been lost in the bureaucratic jungle. Involving colleagues from the Superintendency and other museums, a truly outstanding micro-team, we are finally here together. We can be proud and satisfied with the excellent results achieved so far. I would like to thank all those who followed me by believing in the path I chose, despite the fact that from the beginning I did not follow the most comfortable path but the one that I felt was the right path to secure this museum and to bring it into a functional, air-conditioned, safe, clear and enlightened future. It was not to be taken for granted that I would find the support and trust of the people with whom I work very willingly and peacefully. I am determined to move forward with what we have started and doing what they have called me to do: bringing the Accademia Gallery of Florence from the 19th century into the 21st century.”

“In these years,” Gennaro Miccio stresses, “the critical and complex situation of the Accademia Gallery, which has never been addressed for decades and without a general vision, has been deepened with the excellent predisposition of the Director in charge, trying to understand the multiple anomalies of the various technological systems. Procedures that took months to arrive at the feasibility study. Careful research was needed to understand the causes of the huge deficiencies and on which fronts to intervene. With constant and pressing insistence, an overall picture was obtained of the various systems that, in a confused and uncoordinated manner, currently govern a complex system such as that of the Accademia Gallery where for decades interventions have been superimposed that have certainly obeyed the needs of the moment and partial or contingent visions, but never the organic and overall management of the structure understood as a unitary organism. The result is having to manage a system that is the result of a summation of interventions over the years without any overall vision of the system. This preparatory but necessary work was neither simple nor quick, but it finally allowed us to have at our disposal a feasibility study from which to select the most urgent and necessary interventions from those intended to improve and optimize the conditions of the Museum, until we could achieve an adjustment, a modernization and a raising of the general level of the functionality of the entire structure. Careful research was needed to understand the causes of the enormous deficiencies that would also allow to understand and appropriately plan on which fronts to intervene, especially to solve the serious deficiencies of the thermal systems; but also the structural aspects are not of secondary importance, if one thinks of the serious deficiencies of the wooden trusses, known and documented long ago, but with respect to which there has been no action until now. With this basic tool it has been possible to address such a complex situation with a minimum of scientificity and knowledge of the problems, initiating the albeit complex procedures to obtain executive designs, for which it has taken the time imposed by the regulations in force and by the very complexity of the subjects addressed. Currently we are in the phase of concluding some designs that should finally lead to contracting some important works intended to solve the most urgent and necessary problems: one of the objectives, for example, is to finally solve the unpleasant climatic conditions inside the halls, especially in the summer period, a result that will certainly be made tangible with the next season. Just as any concerns about the condition of the wooden trusses above the Colossus Hall will be averted. The Academy Gallery’s prospective loss of management autonomy will cause it to fall under the old, but currently applicable, administrative management of the State’s general accounting system, which involves, first and foremost, the loss of ticketing revenues, the expectation of annual allocations of resources from the ministry, and strict adherence to the manner in which expenditures are committed and accounting closures are made each year. Therefore, such a pressing and complex program as illustrated before, if deprived of the security of resources always available at all times, will only suffer the delays and slowdowns that have always characterized the operational management of these facilities.”

Pictured: the Bartolini Plaster Gallery of the Accademia Gallery in Florence

Major work at the Accademia Gallery in Florence. Major renovations to the building kick off in July

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.