Museums, Opera Laboratori Fiorentini exits Civita and enters a new company, Opera20

Opera Laboratori Fiorentini SpA, a company that deals with museum services and has long managed the external services of several major public museums and others, officially exits the Civita Group and enters a new company, Opera20, founded by several Italian entities active in the world of culture. Opera20 was born from Poggio13, a company owned by Giuseppe Costa, from Cultura a Firenze srl, a company of the founders of Opera Laboratori Fiorentini headed by Renzo Ruggeri, and from the Livorno-based publishing house Sillabe srl, which has been engaged in art publications for many years and whose majority is held by Maddalena Paola Winspeare, who was joined by the American fund Pricoa. Opera20 acquired from the IEN Group - Italian Entertainment Network - Civita total control of Opera Laboratori Fiorentini, 51 percent of Civita Tre Venezie, 40 percent of Opera San Gimignano, 50 percent of CWay and 20 percent of TOSC.

Several museums in which Opera Laboratori Fiorentini is active. Since March 1998 the Florentine SpA has managed all the “additional services” of the Polo Museale Fiorentino (now divided into five institutes, including the Uffizi Galleries), the Archaeological Park of Pompeii and Herculaneum and the Reggia di Caserta. Over the years, Opera Laboratori has expanded its activities at many other museum sites in Tuscany, such as the Cathedral complex in Siena, Santa Maria della Scala and the Museo Civico also in Siena, the Cathedral and Civic Museums of San Gimignano, the Temple of San Biagio in Montepulciano, the museums of the city of Pienza, the Abbey of Sant’Antimo and the Civic Museums of Montalcino and Colle Val d’Elsa, the Diocesan Museum of Cortona and the Cathedral complex of Spoleto in Umbria, and Villa Giulia in Rome. Also in Rome in conjunction with the management of all sales outlets inside the Vatican Museums (2009-2020), to allow the purchase in extremis of exclusive products from the main Italian museums, he created and manages the Gift Museum Shop at Rome - Fiumicino Airport. A collection of museums worth about 10 million visitors a year.

Opera Laboratori Fiorentini is involved in services such as ticketing, reception, design, organization and staging of exhibitions. Moreover, the laboratory for the design and realization of exhibitions and museum layouts is flanked by a carpentry workshop that, with more than 30 years of united experience, makes it possible to realize what has been designed by fellow architects (the latest layout in order of time was made for the new Museum of the Cathedral of Pisa). Opera also counts on other laboratories: there are, for example, the laboratory specialized in the study and production of stage sets (which also boasts international patents), the one qualified in the restoration of ancient textiles and tapestries. These activities are carried out by its own staff: Opera has in its workforce 650 people hired on a permanent basis with a National Collective Bargaining Agreement, and in the months of high season it reaches more than 1,000.

The company will have a Board of Directors composed of Operational Members who will have to strengthen relations with Public and Private Administrations, supporting them more and more toward the process of valorization that is increasingly required of museum management. “The development of the offer, the quality of the service, the synergy with the museum sites, the simplicity of information for access and reservations,” the company states in a note, “are only part of the ideas that Opera Laboratori Fiorentini will put in place to strengthen theactivity in the managed sites and this will form the basis of the bids for future tenders always respecting administrations, competitors and above all its own people that Opera Laboratori Fiorentini Spa will put even more at the center of its growth project.”

The company has identified four challenges for the immediate future: the first is to support public and private administrations in the difficult restart of the second lockdown, accompanying museum sites to a slow recovery while respecting safety regulations, but trying to make the most of what is on offer to get culture back on track as quickly as possible. The second is to make Opera Laboratori Fiorentini’s “laboratories” known to all those people who do not know or know little about the company’s reality, which sums up the skills of carpenters, sculptors, textile and construction restorers, specialized assemblers, architects, surveyors, art and science historians, communicators, operators in the field of digital production, territorial marketing operators, cultural and heritage planners and entrepreneurs (for this purpose Opera Laboratori Fiorentini has also launched the new website operalaboratori. com, online since Dec. 19). The third challenge will start in the spring of 2021 and will see the company engaged in the restoration and enhancement work of the former convent and former prison of San Domenico, owned by the Municipality of San Gimignano and the Region of Tuscany (San Gimignano was the first municipality to implement cultural state-owned federalism thanks to an “Enhancement Agreement” signed with Mibact and the Agenzia del Demanio in 2011): with this restoration, which will last for three years and will ask the company for an investment of 20 million euros, Opera will be able to dispose together with the Municipality of San Gimignano and the Region of Tuscany of a multipurpose center of 7.000 square meters in the historic center, which will be organized with a convention area, exhibition area, info point, experiential accommodation facilities, art residencies, summer school, outdoor area with 1,000 seats for theater and opera, a reference point for the summer art season for Tuscany and Central Italy, agribar and agrifood, hygienic and personal services, multimedia galleries, patrol walkway with a view of the skyline of the turreted city, and local artisan stores. Finally, the fourth will be the enhancement of the Complex of Sant’Agostino for the Archdiocese of Siena and the Municipality of Montalcino with the design and realization and management of the “Brunello Museum,” an exhibition and experiential itinerary dedicated to the well-known wine.

Lawyer Andrea Dal Negro of Studio Legale Carbone D’Angelo in Genoa, lawyer Francesco Gaviraghi of Studio Legale Associato VS in Florence and Dr. Carlo Pelosi of Studio Commerciale Pelosi e Associati in Florence collaborated on the complex corporate transaction alongside the Opera 20 company. DLA Piper Law Firm of Rome assisted the IEN-Civita Group, while the American Pricoa Fund was assisted by Simmons & Simmons LLP of Milan and Akin Gump of London.

Photo: the Modigliani exhibition at the Museo della Città di Livorno (2019-2020) with fittings created by Opera Laboratori Fiorentini.

Museums, Opera Laboratori Fiorentini exits Civita and enters a new company, Opera20

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