Siena's National Picture Gallery undresses

We gladly receive and publish this open letter from a group of graduates and undergraduates of the University of Siena: the Siena National Picture Gallery is about to be dismembered. A decision that appears to be completely dastardly and will have damaging effects, explained in this very letter. We, as Windows on Art, strongly oppose this decision and will try to make this letter as widely known as possible!

The National Picture Gallery Undresses

If this is the second time in the space of a few months that a group of art history graduates and undergraduates from the University of Siena, devoid of any kind of self-interest, feel the need to write about the situation in which the management of the city’s cultural heritage finds itself, there must be a reason.

Last March we wrote about the inappropriate presence of events related to Siena Sport Week within the exhibition spaces of Santa Maria della Scala. We learn today of other unpleasant events, thanks to the articles by Montanari and Piccini, who have highlighted, just days before their implementation, the latest decisions made by Superintendent Mario Scalini.

Without the slightest involvement of public opinion and the local scientific community, the unjustified dismemberment of the National Picture Gallery’s collection is about to be implemented. A large part of the seventeenth-century corpus, in fact, would be separated from the main ensemble, to be transferred by the end of November within the Soprintendenza’s premises, located in Palazzo Piccolomini, Via del Capitano No. 1.

The National Picture Gallery of Siena

The works that would be moved are actually one of the Pinacoteca’s latest acquisitions, previously owned by Florentine antiquarian Giovanni Pratesi and purchased in 1995 at state expense. The annexation of these allowed the Pinacoteca to bear witness to Sienese artistic events at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries (Manetti, Mei, Petrazzi, Rustichino, Vanni, Tornioli).

In the dark about the Superintendent’s motivations for making this decision, it seems senseless for several reasons and raises questions for us.

The Picture Gallery has so far returned a more complete image of the city’s important historical and artistic landscape. So why fragment its collection, effectively undoing one of the most important ministerial interventions of the past two decades?

At a time when the remaining part of the collection seems destined to finally be housed in the Santa Maria della Scala, does this further division make sense? Why double the expense of museum management, since this measure not only increases costs but also inevitably reduces its attractiveness?

Relegating the Pratesi collection alone to the Soprintendenza building, in spaces unsuitable for conservation and display (mostly offices), will greatly limit its public usability while compromising the possibilities for free research. Will people really choose to go and admire these few works, in a city already a stage for hit-and-run tourism? The fact that the Pinacoteca will remain mutilated of an important nucleus of works leaves room for perplexity about the reasons for the choice.

In conjunction with the senseless deprivation, we learn about the latest ways of investing ministerial funds dedicated to culture. From the official website of the Superintendency we read that: ministerial funding [...] has enabled the digitization of a significant and selected part of the archive of Monica Bolzoni, an Italian fashion designer unknown to most. In one of the rooms of the Pinacoteca, next to important preparatory cartoons (Beccafumi among others), it is possible to admire some of her creations. Although the Superintendence assures us that the initiative will allow young people, both from Siena and from other places that will have an interest in this creative cultural activity (UNESCO), to explore, even remotely, the stages of a career as singular, as varied, of one of the protagonists of Italian fashion, we remain of the opinion that it is a poorly worthwhile, unjustified and senseless operation. We believe that these funds could have been more intelligently invested in improving museum quality standards, such as the maintenance of the lighting system in the Pinacoteca’s exhibition rooms, in many cases even in the dark, as any visitor can see.

At a time when Siena would need clarity and cooperation in order to understand what the role of culture will be in the city’s near future, we question the actions of the responsible institutions and strongly urge a halt to the dismemberment maneuver.

We believe that the citizenry has every right to be aware of the management of its cultural heritage. We therefore demand that our questions be answered by the competent authorities, namely the Superintendence for Historical, Artistic and Ethnoanthropological Heritage and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism.

Federico Carlini, Vincenzo Curiale, Marco Fagiani, Francesca Interguglielmi, Valentina Isidori, Luca Mansueto, Raffaele Moretti, Ylenia Sottile

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