MiBACT reform: far from revolutionary. Few good ideas, many doubts

To comment on the MiBACT reform presented on July 16 by Minister Dario Franceschini, I will begin with a statement by the minister himself, made on the same day the reform was presented. Said the minister the other day,"in Italy we have gold mines everywhere with our museums, our heritage, our beauty and we have not known how to use them." I start with this statement because if this is the assumption that gave birth to the reform, it means something is wrong. Let’s leave aside for a moment the ever-tiring rhetoric of beauty and focus on one of the main points. And that point is not, as journalist Gian Maria De Francesco wrote in Il Giornale, the fact that museums must make money. Museums should not produce money, museums should produce culture: that is their function. However, if we want to see museums as a tourist attraction, it is, if anything, the context within which the museum is set that must yield money. In the sense that if we want to focus on tourism, then we have to makeItaly an attractive destination, and this is a goal that is beyond the scope of the reform: we would need a policy of direction, which is lacking both at the national level and, often, at the local level, although at the local level there are some very good realities. And in any case, where institutions are lacking at the local level, it is often associations or individual practitioners who try to give directions. It is therefore difficult to think about developing a serious tourism policy if there is a lack of those who know how to give direction, there is often a lack of networks between operators in the sector, taxation for businesses is very high (and this, of course, greatly affects the costs for the individual tourist arriving in our country, whose prices are more expensive than the European average: according to Coldiretti, we are the most expensive destination in the Mediterranean), strategies that define segmented products (i.e., aimed at specific targets of travelers and tourists) are often absent, squatting is not fought in a serious way, and infrastructure is lacking. The minister tries taking a regional train to reach, for example, Cinque Terre from La Spezia or, even worse, Siena from Florence: routes traveled by many foreign tourists who on our wonderful regional trains do not exactly get a beautiful concept about our country. Tourism in Italy still works quite well, albeit with all its shortcomings and shortcomings, because we are basically living off an annuity built in the past and for which we have very little credit (if any, since that annuity we are making it collapse piece by piece).

This premise is necessary because it is the same reform that would like to integrate the Ministry’s two areas of intervention, namely culture and tourism. Which is conceptually wrong (and it is an error we also carry with us because of the abolition years ago of the ministry in charge of tourism). First, because there is not only cultural tourism in Italy. Second, because the areas of intervention are different: you cannot think about culture with the same logic with which you think about tourism. Read: it is not possible to think about making museums profitable. Anna Somers Cocks also wrote this in The Art Newspaper on July 15, in an article that Ilaria Baratta translated for Finestre Sull’Arte: even in the United States and Great Britain, museums do not make a profit. Third, because we would like to know if there is an adequately trained tourism staff in MiBACT. With the reform, the regional directorates of the Ministry (which, incidentally, will be de facto abolished as they will be transformed into administrative coordination offices: but who will be in charge of carrying out their functions directly on the ground?) and the central directorates general in charge of cultural heritage will be given functions for tourism: so how does Minister Franceschini intend to implement this merger? Are the staff of the directorates properly trained, or are they to be trained in tourism? And how long will it take? Or: will new hires be initiated to enrich the ministry with young people qualified in tourism? I have my doubts, and I am more inclined to believe that it will be the usual Italian-style hodgepodge. With all due respect, but frankly, I cannot imagine compassionate middle-aged archaeologists, who until now were only interested in excavations and finds, while they design tourism marketing campaigns or discuss strategies to promote an archaeological complex on social networks. Moreover, very nicely, on the website of the General Directorate for Antiquities, next to the words “Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism” there is a big asterisk that refers to a note where it says that until June 26, 2013, the institution was called “Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities.” It almost seems as if it is meant to say, “look, we have nothing to do with that stuff that starts with T and it was just imposed on us by a circular.” So the question remains: who will be in charge of tourism at the regional and general directorates? The same people who for all their lives have been in charge only (for example) of excavations and restoration? Or will young people be hired, perhaps specializing (why not?) in archaeology or art history but with a good, solid foundation in tourism? Perhaps rhetorical questions.

Coming instead to the area of culture tout court, what about the proposal for an Italian museum system? The reform envisages that twenty museums will have the status of executive offices and their directors can be chosen by public selection from within or outside the administration, including foreigners. And here the question is: Who is going to evaluate the curricula of the directors? By whom will the commissions be formed? Will opening the selection also to outsiders guarantee greater quality or will it risk turning the whole thing into yet another Italianate affair with the partitocracy that will pressure the commissions to put recycled managers, or worse, politicians who need to be given a chair or, why not, girlfriends of friends of the powerful, in charge of the museums? And again: but was this really necessary? To direct the twenty museums included in the reform list we already have very competent people: just think of Antonio Natali at the Uffizi. A director-historian of art who also deserves credit for having well welded the museum to its territory, with (among other things) a project like The City of the Uffizi. In fact, if there is one good thing in the Italian museum system (the one that has been there so far, not the one that will come after the reform and that we do not know what it will be like) consists precisely in the close link between museums and territory. Will this link continue to exist with what commentators are already calling “director-managers” and, above all, with the creation of the so-called regional museum poles that will be established to untie museums from their superintendencies? As for the measure of selecting directors, we can say that it appears rather pointless: the problems of Italian museums certainly do not lie in the people who direct them. The problems are upstream: chronic lack of funds for all activities (restorations, renovation of the didactic apparatus, employee overtime, excessive bureaucracy, updating websites, you name it...), lack of turnover with young people who have been standing at the door for years, poor appeal to the public, lack of effective communication, and so on. These are all problems that the reform is careful not to solve: it is not that if we give a supermanager a scooter already taken to its natural limits, the supermanager will turn it into a luxury car. It will always remain a scooter that cannot go beyond its limits. On the other hand, with regard to the measure of the creation of regional museum poles, set up to remedy what is called “a sore point” on the ministry communiqué, namely the fact that museums are all “articulations of the superintendencies,” it must be said that the link between museum and superintendency has made it possible to keep the ties between museum and territory always strong: an all-Italian model that has no equal elsewhere. One has to wonder what will become of this model and whether museums will continue to be linked to their territories. The reform focuses mainly on larger museums: what will be the fallout for smaller museums?

On the other hand, the idea of providing a special directorate general forcontemporary art seems good, hoping that it will serve to raise the level of quality of what is currently offered by even the largest museums: after all, promoting the quality of contemporary art is one of the goals that this reform, explicitly, aims to achieve. Another clever idea is the one that envisages an additional directorate general, this time for education and research, to create the conditions for collaboration between the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, the CNR and other bodies, as well as universities and schools: the need has been felt for a while to give culture the educational value that, although it is not the only value of culture, had been lost sight of for some time. The reform also aims to activate conventions with research institutions and training institutes, to professionally develop internal ministry staff, upgrade skills, and enhance digitization, information gathering, and transparency. However, the question is: Are these all just good intentions? Does the ministry have any idea how to achieve these goals, which will not be achievable at no cost? We will see: it will be crucial that Franceschini manages to get allocations for his ministry back to at least acceptable levels, and now they are not. The Ministry of Cultural Heritage has to carry out its activities with a budget of about 1.5 billion euros.

And finally, what about the amalgamation of the superintendencies of historical and artistic heritage with those of architectural heritage? The effects are already being felt, for example, in Mantua, which as a result of the coming into force of the reform will risk losing its superintendency for historical-artistic heritage, which will be merged with the superintendency for architectural heritage based in Brescia. Are we really sure that this amalgamation will only bring benefits? Or will a city rich in culture like Mantua (and like so many others... ) risk being penalized? And above all: who will dictate the guidelines of the superintendencies? The architects, or the art historians?

Franceschini has presented his reform as a great revolution. Unfortunately, I do not feel able to agree with him. On the contrary: apart from a few good ideas, such as the creation of two directorates general, one for contemporary art and one for education, everything else seems to set the stage for a revolution, yes, but in a negative sense. There are many risks of this reform: we may see the link between museums and territory destroyed. We may find incompetents at the helm of the country’s most important museums. Tourism delegations without adequate expertise will probably produce more harm than good. And landscape protection could suffer a severe blow from an essentially centralist reform. A hard blow that follows another one received on July 1, with an amendment to the so-called Culture Decree establishing “Commissions of Guarantee for the Protection of Cultural Heritage,” which, upon recommendation, will be able to review opinions on cultural heritage and landscape assets issued by peripheral bodies of the ministry. And there is already talk of an amendment that would “commissariate” the Superintendencies and, according to Italia Nostra, put “the shackles on the wrists of the Superintendents and courageous officials who are not afraid to stand up to the strong powers.” The only thing that can be said for now is: we will see what happens. Also because the text of the reform is not out yet. The same thing had happened with the Culture Decree: it seems to be fashionable now to issue press releases instead of the texts of laws.

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