Leonardo3 museum, director stops hunger strike. "Municipality deaf to dialogue, offends Milan."

The director of Milan’s Leonardo3 Museum , Massimiliano Lisa, has decided to end his hunger strike after 12 days since it began. Lisa had begun his protest to denounce the situation in which the museum, which is located in Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, finds itself: in fact, the institute is in danger of closing due to a bureaucratic-administrative dispute that has arisen around the spaces in which the Leonardo3 Museum is based. Spaces on which the sights of a catering business would be stretched, as Lisa said in an interview granted to Federico Giannini on Finestre sull’Arte.

“The hunger strike to save the Leonardo3 Museum stops here,” Lisa wrote in a long post on her Instagram profile, where she also posted a photograph of herself in which she appears visibly slim. “I sinned in naiveté, hoping that humanity and intellectual honesty could burn in the Junta. Their deafness to dialogue is an offense to the city. To continue would hurt me, without scratching their indifference. They have confirmed their intention to auction Leonardo’s temple, selling culture to the highest bidder. They are selling off the city with despicable commodities. I rely on the Judiciary, in the certainty that it can stop this drift and rekindle hope where there is only greed and cronyism. I abandon the weapon of fasting, not the battlefield! The moral baseness of those who oppose me is such that any noble gesture such as a hunger strike is futile, which would only imply further unnecessary suffering for those already hurt by the attempt to close the Leonardo3 Museum. These people respond only to legal means: official documents, investigations, prosecutions, arrests. My struggle, like Leonardo’s art, adapts and multiplies, aiming for a future in which culture is an inviolable right, not a commodity. Despite attempts to silence me, I will raise my voice against falsehoods. With renewed energy, I will continue to fight. The future will hold surprises for us.”

Lisa did, however, get a meeting with the City Council, but it did not have the hoped-for effects: in fact, there were no openings from Palazzo Marino, according to Lisa. The director of the Leonardo 3 Museum, moreover, said that the City Council, even if it loses in front of the Tar, would intend to have the museum remove the columns that mark the entrance to the Leonardo3 Museum: in fact, the institute is located on the upper floors of the gallery, and to reach its floor one has to take an elevator that is on the side of the gallery facing Piazza della Scala. According to Lisa, the measure will make the museum invisible leading to a drop in admissions.

The dispute, according to Massimiliano Lisa’s repeated statements, arose as a result of his refusal to share the museum’s entrance with the catering business that occupies the Gallery’s terrace: the elevator, in fact, is the means that is also used to reach the recently opened tourist walkway on the roofs of the gallery, from which the city can be seen from above, and which is operated by the same company, Duomo 21, that manages the Terrazza Duomo 21, or lounge bar overlooking the Piazza del Duomo.

The petition

Today, meanwhile, a hearing is set at the Tar for the appeal filed by the museum. At the moment, the Leonardo3 Museum can only be saved in two ways: either through the courts, or through a rethink by the administration. And just to try to change the junta’s mind, in these hours Lisa launched a petition on Change.org that has collected almost three thousand signatures.

The petition recalls the achievements of the Leonardo3 Museum, which in addition to being a museum is also a study center on Leonardo da Vinci: the founding in 2013, the 2 million visits in ten years of activity, the financial autonomy, the production of high-level scientific content, using the advice of Martin Kemp, one of the world’s leading experts on Leonardo da Vinci. The petition asks the City of Milan to grant space to the Leonardo3 Museum without a call for bids, charging a cultural fee: there is in fact a precedent, because the City has already done so for the Rizzoli bookstore. In addition, the petition asks to maintain columns marking the museum’s entrance in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

“This gesture is fair and respectful,” Lisa says in the text of the petition. “It would preserve an invaluable cultural heritage. It would support a self-financing institution, demonstrating a virtuous model. It would recognize the importance of culture and art to the community. We appeal to your sense of justice and your love of culture: sign this petition to save the Leonardo3 Museum, a treasure for Milan and the world. A virtuous example of a private entity performing a public service without public contributions.”

Leonardo3 museum, director stops hunger strike. "Municipality deaf to dialogue, offends Milan."

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