Schmidt: "The diffuse Uffizi will have 100 locations. The project will start within three months."

At a hearing in the Culture Commission of the Regional Council of Tuscany, the director of the Uffizi Galleries Eike Schmidt announced that the major project of the"Uffizi diffuse" will start within three months and that there will be"at least sixty, but also one hundred" locations.

“For the diffuse Uffizi there should be at least sixty venues, but I would like even a hundred,” Schmidt told advisors, “of course it cannot all be done in one year, it will take longer.” The director explained that the fulcrum of the project will be "the Medici Villa Ambrogiana in Montelupo Fiorentino, where we will take hundreds of works of art, which, after all, will only return home, because that is where they were welcomed in the seventeenth century.“ Referring to the Villa and the project of its rebirth as a treasure chest of art, the director of the Uffizi Galleries called for ”collaboration with state agencies for the architectural restoration of this asset: without a doubt, one of the most beautiful and most important historic villas in the world."

“I hope to officially announce the start of the Uffizi diffuse project within three months,” he added. Underlying the plan, he finally concluded, "is the concept that ’it is neither justifiable nor ethically correct to keep works closed in storage. Just as wine is not made to be put in the cellar but to be drunk, so works of art are not made to be in storage, but to be admired, drunk with the eyes. We are not for art pour l’art, but we are for art pour l’homme et la femme. And art cannot live only in large exhibition centers: we need that too, but we need to equip ourselves with a polycentric perspective of art distributed as much as possible throughout the territory, and, where possible, in the places where and for which it was born. At the Uffizi we already have over three thousand works on display, there will be more, but that’s fine. The Uffizi diffuse instead serves to almost bring to people’s homes works of art that currently no one can see."

Pictured is the Villa Medicea dell’Ambrogiana. Ph. Credit

Schmidt: "The diffuse Uffizi will have 100 locations. The project will start within three months."

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