Is it right to lend for a fee the goods in Sicilian museum deposits? The opinions of experts

A solution to the age-old issue of deposits or, on the contrary, the shortest shortcut to the debasement and commercialization of assets protected by the Constitution and the Code? We are talking about the decree of last November 30, renamed the “Catania Charter,” in homage to its creator, Superintendent Rosalba Panvini (who just retired). The measure concerns the concession for the use of cultural assets belonging to the State Property and Patrimony of the Sicilian Region “which are in storage in the regional deposits,” with the aim of enhancing them “through the display in public or private places open to the public that meet the requirements of the law.” The institutes that own them will be required to draw up lists of these goods; the concession is subject to the payment of a fee in cash or in the form of goods and services (restoration, archaeometric analysis, cataloging, publication and marketing, etc.); while the superintendence responsible for the territory will be responsible for the supervision of the goods lent.

All good then? Who could possibly disagree with the “valorization” of the repositories? Sure, but only in the dream world of a perfect cultural heritage system, with conscientious superintendents who are independent of politics, and politicians who are responsible and respectful of the skills of technicians, and technicians in sufficient numbers and well paid. Too bad that the reality is quite different, and so, after Salvatore Settis’s unappealing rejection in the interview he gave us and his new intervention in Saturday’s Fatto Quotidiano, the reactions of specialists and Associations in defense of cultural heritage, who wanted to have their say in Windows on Art, were not long in coming.

Actually, even that of the Sicilian Councillor for Cultural Heritage Alberto Samonà, who just two days after our interview, on December 10, ran for cover by signing “guidelines” for the application of the Charter. Succeeding, if possible, in “increasing confusion,” according to Michele Campisi (Italia Nostra). Gianfranco Zanna, president of Legambiente Sicilia (“completely useless proposal”), Alessandro Garrisi, president of Ana, National Association of Archaeologists (“alarmed by the reference to the involvement of unpaid ”volunteers") think the same; Rita Paris, president of the Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli Association (“it creates a list of ’B’ goods for which one can proceed with more ’freedom’ ”); Andrea Incorvaia and Leonardo Bison of the group Do you recognize me? I am a cultural heritage professional (“propagandistic-political use of public cultural heritage”); Maurizio Michelucci, former director of the Opd, Opificio delle Pietre Dure’s school of higher education (“dangerous operation”).

There arevery thorny issues on the table. And if everyone has dwelt on the contents, with a more or less detailed dismantling of the measure, from a formal point of view it seems to us that the decree is flawed by a contradiction between the normative references in the preamble, which refer to assessorial decrees regulating the matter of loans (of 2013 and 2019, themselves opaque regulations that we have dealt with), when the object of the decree is, instead, the concession in use of cultural assets. That in application it may engender overlaps between two distinct and separate institutions, that of loan and that of concession in use, governed by equally distinct articles of the Cultural Heritage Code, seems to find, moreover, confirmation in the Councillor’s press release, which states: “with the ’Catania Charter’ we finally obtain a derogation from Decree No. 1771 of 2013, which regulates the exit from the territory of the Sicilian Region of cultural goods that are part of the collections of museums, picture galleries, galleries, archives and libraries.”

Confusion, we said. Although it evokes them in the high-sounding name, nothing has this measure to do with the historic “restoration charters,” such as the Athens (1931) or Krakow (2000) charters, which codify and incorporate principles and prescriptions designed to guide interventions, the result of complex and gradual elaborations matured following international comparisons. But it has nothing to do even with that other 2007 “Catania Charter” on ecomuseums (an initiative of another superintendent at the time, Gesualdo Campo), translated into law in 2014, left unimplemented for five years and unblocked precisely by Sicilian Regional President Nello Musumeci last year. By a quirk of fate on that same December 10, Councillor Samonà signed on the one hand the guidelines for this “Catania Charter,” and on the other hand the decree recognizing two new ecomuseums, by virtue of the law spawned by that other “Catania Charter.” Confusion, indeed.

And if deposits in the collective imagination refer back to images of dust and piling up, there is precisely one museum in Sicily where one could reverse the coordinates to which one is accustomed when thinking about museological and museographic ordering, and it concerns precisely the issue of deposits, linked to museum “personality.” If all museums are born to exorcise death, to remove objects from life and the inexorable passage of time, in the Regional Museum of Messina, born from the rubble of the earthquake of 1908, the visitor could have been induced to grieve the grief that struck an’entire society if one had thought of a path through the deposits, extraordinary, because it is there, in those fragments of an immense heritage, that the drama of the catastrophe that wounded it still palpitates. These deposits are (would be) much more exciting than any well-ordered hall.

Depot of the Paolo Orsi Regional Archaeological Museum in Syracuse.

The opinions of specialists and Associations

For Maurizio Michelucci, former director of the School of Higher Education of the Opd, Opificio delle Pietre Dure, “the principle is not bad, however, there remain important dark areas regarding protection and enhancement: they are all referred back to Article 5, to acts within the competence of the director general. Very dangerous and a harbinger of possible damage and ’devaluation.’ Besides, the whole operation at zero cost? Cataloguing and grouping by ’homogeneous groups’ are delicate operations that require expertise and those in charge of them must be paid! It seems to me a dangerous operation, without the prerequisites I listed.”

Cut to the chase Gianfranco Zanna, president of Legambiente Sicilia: “And who could not agree to a proposal of this kind: emptying museum storerooms and making usable artifacts that no one knows about. All the more so when then there is someone who claims that the operation concerns as much as 80 percent of our heritage. But questions arise: but where have these gentlemen been? What have they been doing all these years while occupying important roles in the management of cultural heritage in Sicily? Have they only now become aware of all this? Now they think they have found the egg of Columbus. The proposal has, I repeat, its appeal but it will be totally useless. It will never be activated, given the conditions that the aldermanic decree provides and I cannot imagine those that will be written in the possible call for allocation, if it is ever made. All that remains is a good dose of propaganda, but our thirsty and asphyxiated Cultural Heritage needs more.”

Even Do You Recognize Me? I am a cultural heritage professional shares the starting assumption, but it goes no further: “As interesting as an argument about deposits is, since so many lie in situations of semi-oblivion without any possibility of valorization, the method and merit of the proposal risk generating a potentially dangerous boomerang effect on Sicilian heritage,” Andrea Incorvaia explains. “Everything is very general, it is not clear what criteria will lead to private individuals obtaining the heritage to be exhibited, it is not clear who can exhibit (shopping centers? restaurants?). While it is clear, because it is mentioned, that it can also be confiscated assets.”

“Since they can be exhibited for 14 years (!!) paying one-tenth of their value, it does not seem like a system totally free from abuse or, worse, propagandistic-political use of public cultural heritage,” Leonardo Bison adds. “The other thing that is clear is the contracting out to an investee company and the use of student interns: in short, the certainty that this operation is not going to create quality work. When a law is so general in structure and so precise in some specific points, it cannot leave us calm. If a public-private collaboration for exhibitions can be desirable, certainly not with tacit renewals every 7 years and with such vague criteria.”

Rita Paris, President of the Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli Association, focuses on the primacy of the compromised study, and reviews the individual articles, also making it a taxonomic issue: "the term ’in storage’ refers to a forgotten, obsolete heritage. It cannot be applied to cultural property. Even if said materials are not intended for display, this does not mean that they cannot be in the circumstances of desirable cultural initiatives, such as exhibitions and thematic displays. It would, however, be desirable for them to be intended for study, the subject of dissertations and scientific exercises. Article 3 does not subtract value from such assets, for which, on the contrary, in-depth study would be necessary. The preparation of lists of said materials actually debases their value and clears them for different uses, creating a b-list for which one can proceed with greater ’freedom’. It is most serious that cataloguers from the in-house company Servizi Ausiliari Sicilia and university students will be used to compile such lists, contravening current cataloguing regulations. Article 5 refers to concession for use by means of a call for tenders and a centralization of procedures that removes all authority in this regard from the Institutes’ in-house professionals. Article 6 specifies that the concession for use is subject to the payment of a fee of not less than one-tenth of the inventory estimates. In this regard, it should be noted that the estimates may not be up-to-date; that the consideration will be part of the notice, thus determining a monetary value to the concession in use, irrespective of any evaluation of the quality of any projects; and that this payment will entitle the Institutes to state and EU contributions or funding. It is noted that once again there is a very serious impoverishment of the specialized skills of cultural heritage personnel; that the practice of using cultural property as a commodity and not as public property for which it is a must to put in place procedures for knowledge and enhancement, by the public administration, is introduced and formalized. Once again, external solutions are sought to put cultural assets to income, initiating a very serious practice that brings no benefit to the cultural assets themselves and entrusts their management to others, including private ones."

Palermo State Archives repository

Alessandro Garrisi, president of Ana, National Association of Archaeologists, strives to find some positive aspects as well. The final balance, however, confirms a great concern, with a direct commitment to vigilance. He stresses that these are “objects that at the moment have no connection to a precise site or place and therefore speak to the public only through themselves and, at the limit, through the history of their own discovery (eg egregious cases of heritage theft add the historical value of their own criminal history to that of the piece itself). We also find correct the principle of payment by the private individual of a rental fee (set at 10 percent of the value of the work: however, we would need to know what methodology will be used to determine the value of the pieces). Perhaps we would have appreciated a little more precision about the destination of the sums disbursed by the private party, for which the hypotheses of destination are multiple and sometimes a little too vague.”

“What is worrying,” Garrisi adds, “is the idea of valorization that is expressed in the Charter, or rather the one that ’is not’ expressed. Indeed, while we can agree with making pieces of heritage available to the public, at private expense, this operation needs to be accompanied by a real ’cultural project’ that better specifies the vague concept of ’valorization project’ referred to in the decree. Taking a Hellenistic maenad and displaying it at the entrance of a disco is not in itself a valorization operation. It is necessary for the private individual who shows desire in joining the operation to explain in detail how the operation will be carried out, involving what professionalism, explaining what actions will be conducted to go beyond simply ’making it available to the public’ and to give value, through display, to the work. Because exposure alone and as an end in itself does not guarantee anything.”

Particular attention, the Ana president continues, “should be paid to the operation of forming the lists, to which the Region’s peripheral institutes are called, referred to in Art. 4 of Councillor Samonà’s Decree: we appreciate that it has been specified that the lists will be formed by expert and professional cataloguers, but above all that it has been specified that the operation of involving university students in disciplines related to the preservation of cultural heritage is exclusively of ’help’ to professional cataloguers and in any case aimed not at all students, but at those ’under a training apprenticeship scheme. On this aspect, as a professional association, we will allow ourselves to exercise vigilant surveillance to prevent the ’aid’ from becoming a real action comparable to the unpaid work that professionals should do instead. On the other hand, it alarms the reference to the involvement of unpaid ’volunteers’ that appears in Decree No. 78 of 10/12/2020 and did not appear in Decree No. 74 of 30/11/2020 signed by the same councilor Samonà: the deterioration from one decree to another is evident, as is the conflict between the two devices. The surveillance of the National Association of Archaeologists will therefore not only be on the use of university students ’in aid’, but also on the professionalism employed in a voluntary form by volunteer associations, of which the ancient vice of involving even simple enthusiasts in tasks reserved by law for specialists in possession of specific requirements (DM 244/2019) is well known. The specification that volunteers must also possess ’appropriate qualifications’ is therefore a positive aspect that does not, however, erase the totally unsupportable decision to use unpaid professionals on a voluntary basis. The code of ethics of the National Association of Archaeologists is crystal clear on the responsibilities incumbent on professional archaeologists, and we hope for similar oversight from the professional associations of other cultural heritage professionals. On the whole, therefore, we believe that the operation, if conducted with strict criteria aimed at the cultural enhancement of the property (in the constitutional sense) and not mere enjoyment, can be a moment of enrichment for a wide public and an opportunity for museums to propose their cultural offerings to the outside world. However, we reiterate the need for requests from private individuals to be accompanied by a real cultural project, prepared by a professional under Article 9-bis of the Cultural Heritage Code , competent in the subject matter of the requested property (Legislative Decree 42/2004 and Law 110/2014).”

Michele Campisi, coordinator of the Cultural Heritage Table at the national presidency of Italia Nostra, also dwells on the contradictions between the November decree and the subsequent December guidelines. The architect (there is an obvious reference to the favorable stance taken by Leandro Janni, president of Italia Nostra Sicilia) is keen to point out that his own statements “represent personal conclusions that have not yet been developed and discussed, as seems necessary, within Italia Nostra. The very significant implications of the issue, the importance of the topic addressed in its institutional and national entirety, demand the critical deepening and comparison of the different voices, as well as the ’safeguard’ of the founding values of the association, irreducible to the discretion of the various sections.”

The Regional Museum of Messina

It is worth reporting his thoughtful speech in its entirety. “For almost a decade,” says the architect, "the misunderstood and demagogic concept of Valorization of cultural heritage, declined between populism and the market, has reduced the national heritage to the availability of any political initiative; in Sicily its most extreme application is with the latest decrees on assets in storage. ’Incompetence’ is the key to this arrangement, plastically visible, for example, in the direction of the Bellomo Museum in Syracuse entrusted to a geologist (the place where Palazzolo’s Annunciation is kept: the most delicate work of Antonello known). Very well known is the issue of national and Sicilian repositories. As varied as the resources deployed have been, there is still no National Catalog or even a precise system. The situation, read in due relation to this latest measure, casts troubling shadows. The limitation posed by the substantial lack of knowledge of the heritage is not only due to the lack of cataloguing, but rather to the inaccessible indexing of the assets. Indeed, an inventory number of a series of summarily listed objects cannot be taken as an identifying reference. The assessor solves the problem with a list of inventory lots, prepared by outside catalogers and university students. There is little doubt about these inconsistencies. Looming is the risk of allowing the transferability of assets still without that specific ’status’ required by the Code of Cultural Heritage (Legislative Decree 42/2004). The full recognizability of works of art and the object of historical interest is in fact the result of a long process that is gendered through the ’awareness’ of the asset. This process is not reducible to a simplified form, as it is here in the Catania Charter, nor can it be exhausted outside of a cognitive ’statute’ that took place without a research of the contexts, of the provenance, which is conducible in the complete and due critical instrumentation and in the ability of competent identification of its underlying cultures. The process itself is the result of times and progress even independent of the sedimentary nature of the ’repository’ and pertaining to the idea of a dynamic heritage and not simply defined by a dusty catalog and the static internment of a box, cabinet or shelf. The facilities intended for our cultural heritage, in addition to the public display of the ’museum’ in its many problematic meanings and recurrences, are not entities and places simply occupied by employees and things in the quality of objects but, all these categories are defined in the varied and manifold projection on the territory. These tasks that designate the first elementary level of protection cannot, therefore, be delegated to institutions outside the state structure. The preservation of these commons is a very delicate function that pertains to the process of recognition and provenance from cultural history and action of protection that is the exclusive competence of the state. Exhibitions and expositions that enhance them, promoting their proper enjoyment are as is known usual and possible. The distortion of their meanings is the first form of manipulation and betrayal of history, of content as not mere ’things’ or ’objects.’ It thus retreats to the category of unknown, singular object, useful only for the amazement aroused by its declared foreignness to the contemporary context, retracing, with low emotional impact and with the objective limitations of contemporary man, the subspecies of a wunderkammer."

“It can also be said,” Campisi concludes, “that the effect of the three ’devices’ issued, namely (1) the Charter proper; (2) the first decree of November 30, 2020; and (3) the second decree of December 10, 2020, have generated great confusion. Example? The way of offsets: in the charter, various modalities are mentioned without that of an actual monetary payment; in the Nov. 30 decree, monetary offsets and other things such as restorations, publications, and marketing are mentioned; and in the Dec. 10 decree, offsets against the costs of preventive restoration are mentioned. These three different versions seem to me to reveal a mental disorder and to be the effect of an extemporaneous way of dealing with such an important subject. Constantly rehashing the standard, as if it were precisely an essay, a ’story’ that needs to be corrected and reprinted for future verification. This is not exactly the regular way of dealing with issues. The weight of an incompetence that should operate within the perimeters of a ’legal nature’ and not a ’narrative’ of the deliberative functions of the Assessor also perhaps has an impact here.”

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