Leonardo3 Museum still at risk of closure. Director threatens hunger strike

The Leonardo3 Museum has won an important battle, but it has not yet won the war. The latest developments in the thorny affair that threatens to shut down the museum located in Milan ’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele were summed up yesterday at a press conference by the director, Massimiliano Lisa, who also raised the specter of a hunger strike to prevent the museum from closing its doors. But let’s go in order: the museum, dedicated to the genius of Leonardo da Vinci, with an exhibition on 600 square meters (reproductions of drawings and works, models of the artist’s inventions, digital technologies and much more), has been active since 2013 as a permanent exhibition and then, from 2023, as a museum. In more than a decade of operation, the Leonardo3 Museum has welcomed 5 million visitors (270,000 in 2024 alone), and today it also houses a research center that brings together experts on the artist (the museum’s scientific committee is chaired by Martin Kemp, one of the world’s leading Leonardo da Vinci experts). The problem that now threatens to close the museum is due to bureaucratic and administrative problems.

In fact, the institute occupies spaces that it does not own: it obtained them in 2013 under a partnership with the Rosso Group, which at the time owned the Seven Stars Hotel in the gallery, one of the few in the world to be located inside a national monument (the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele), and was the concessionaire of the spaces. In 2018, the Rosso Group sold the hotel, which became the “Vik Galleria” (and took over as concessionaire on April 1, 2019), but the museum continued its activities in the usual spaces, renewing its collaboration with the new owner. However, the hotel’s state-owned concession, which was set to expire in 2031, has been subject to a forfeiture action by the municipality, against which the accommodation facility has since appealed. In fact, the state property office believes that the one between the concessionaire company and the museum was not a collaboration, but an unauthorized sub-concession (the contract between concessionaire and municipality in fact does not provide for a sub-concession).

The first move by the state property department, Lisa explained at the press conference, was to deny the concession ofpublic land occupancy to the museum. Ten square meters in the Gallery, necessary to lead visitors to the elevator that must be taken to go up to the second floor of the building, where the museum is located. Lisa, at a press conference, let it be known that the museum has paid 380 thousand euros from 2013 to date in public land occupation (never discounted even during Covid, despite the fact that the restaurants had free dehors at that time). This action by the state property office dates back to October 2023: on November 17 of that year, Lisa explained at a press conference, the state property office moves the concessionaire with objections about the alleged irregularities. Lisa then makes an initial appeal to the press, and the state property sends, on December 22, 2023, a pec to the museum acknowledging the importance of the institute and assuring it in writing that, even in the case of problems with the concessionaire, the activity would continue.

This brings us to July 2, the date on which the museum is reached by an order, issued by the City of Milan, to forfeit the concessions for the use of the spaces given to the concessionaire, for a series of contractual violations, including, precisely, the relationship with the Leonardo3 museum: the sub-concession is contested, as anticipated. However, the museum feels calm by virtue of the pec of December 22 of the previous year. However, on Nov. 14, 2024, the state property department again denies the occupation of public land with reference to the July decree, “thus defeating the pec that was sent to us,” Lisa declares. The issue is momentarily postponed by the Lombardy Regional Administrative Court , which, last Dec. 19, suspended the disqualification order pending a hearing on the merits to be held in April.

In essence, at the moment the museum has only won the battle, by virtue of the fact that the Tar suspended the forfeiture order, but its future is still uncertain. What doesn’t add up, according to Lisa, is the fact that the concessionaire had already viewed the collaboration agreement between the museum and concessionaire in 2018, without objecting to anything: it would have done so only a few years later, thus changing its interpretation of the papers. And in any case, the museum believes that even if it were a sub-concession, the city would still have had the authority to accept it, or to endorse the museum’s presence in the spaces granted to the hotel. Meanwhile, after the press conference, the Milan City Council’s State Property Department sent a note expressing its position: “The Administration intends to safeguard the continuation of the museum activity at least until the settlement of the dispute with the concessionaire. Despite the fact that Leonardo3 did not have any relationship of a concessionary and, more generally, contractual nature with the Municipal Administration, the latter has sought to hold an attitude that is as conservative and protective of the continuity of the exhibition as possible, while reiterating on several occasions that the fate of the permanence of the exhibition was linked to the forfeiture proceedings initiated against the concessionaire. The Administration also makes it clear that when the existing contract with the concessionaire expires, the allocation of these spaces will follow the process of the public evidence procedure.”

In short, judicial developments in the matter are awaited. But if the museum is kicked out of the gallery, Massimiliano Lisa is willing to go on hunger strike, as he said at a press conference: “On March 1, on the occasion of the twelfth anniversary of the opening of the Leonardo3 Museum in the Gallery,” he said, “if politics has remained deaf to our appeal, as a sign of civil and nonviolent protest against the possibility of a cultural activity of great importance being closed due to disinterest, I will begin a hunger strike.”

“In this space we have given shape to a dream, we have created something absolutely unrepeatable,” Lisa recalled, “making 270,000 visitors in 600 square meters, 5 million since we opened, testifies that something unique is being done here, and that I was certain that the politics of this city would preserve it like a panda, and that it would certainly not try to close it.” The Leonardo3 Museum is a private entity that, in addition to welcoming thousands of visitors, also employs 25 people who, with the closure of the museum, would risk finding themselves without employment. Lisa also complains that there is a lack of dialogue between the museum and the municipality, despite the fact that the Leonardo3 Museum and Palazzo Marino are separated by a few steps: in fact, according to Lisa, the mayor and the councilor for culture would not even respond to her requests to be received. Yet, she pointed out, for ten years, from 2013 to 2023, the City has always sponsored the museum’s initiatives. A delicate situation, in short, which, moreover, was created at a historical moment for the museum: this year, in fact, for the first time in its history, Leonardo3 hosted some original sheets by Leonardo da Vinci, in the context of an exhibition that began last November 18 and is scheduled to close on February 15.

Director Lisa, in any case, says he is confident, hoping for a favorable outcome of the court proceedings. And in the meantime, he makes an appeal to President Sergio Mattarella, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli and Regional President Fontana: “The appeal is for them to come and visit our museum and help us open a dialogue with the city administration, which refuses even to dialogue with us.”

Leonardo3 Museum still at risk of closure. Director threatens hunger strike

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