Sgarbi: idiotic to close beaches and archaeological sites, grotesque to close museums. Now Franceschini tells us what to do

It was “idiotic” to close beaches and outdoor venues, and contradictory to close museums as they were declared essential public services in 2015, Vittorio Sgarbi (Mixed Group) said, speaking in the House after Cultural Heritage Minister Dario Franceschini’s briefing on measures to support culture in the wake of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Sgarbi also called for practicality and promptness from Franceschini, asking him to say immediately and clearly what museums need to do to prepare to receive visitors again.

“The coronavirus,” Sgarbi began, addressing Franceschini, “is a dictatorship, and actually culture has not been punished at all, because there is no better condition for reading than closure, and the reading within us is a chorus, it is a theater, so they were moments of great meditation and great happiness, so much so that we could say that it is useless to invoke, as our friend Franceschini does, vacations. We have taken vacations: it is necessary to work, not to take vacations, we have taken far too many vacations. May 1 was the day of contradiction, the day of rest for work that becomes another day boringly of missed work.”

“Now,” Sgarbi continued, “in culture this is all the more evident because the government has made a serious mistake: a health mistake and a political mistake. Open air should not have been banned in any way, in the logic of any health organization or of great doctors like Garattini [ed. note: Silvio Garattini, president of the Mario Negri Institute in Milan]. Open air means theaters, amphitheaters, archaeological sites, closing them was idiotic, like closing beaches. Now for tourism it is clear that reopening the beaches today is the least that can be done, because it is true, vacations or no vacations, July and August will be wonderful days for the virus death feast, but it is necessary that the beaches are ready, it is necessary that those places of recreational tourism are such that they allow people to arrive. Closing to promenades was stymied by nine magistrates, preventing you from being on a beach and punished by people blocking and fining you was grotesque. Theaters and amphitheaters need to open immediately, and we need a protocol, such as the one Dr. Bagnoli is lamenting today, directing our museum in Ferrara, for May 18 [editor’s note: Martina Bagnoli, director of the Estensi Galleries].”

“But then it will be necessary to figure out how,” Sgarbi pointed out, “and it needs to be said now, because May 18 is otherwise an illusion, and to have kept the museums closed is a grotesque contradiction to what you declared on November 5, 2015. You said, ’that in Italy museums, places of culture, libraries and archives become essential public services, and therefore even essential performance levels apply, is really a great achievement.’ An achievement lost right away! Because if they are essential services, museums should have been open exactly like supermarkets: I don’t understand why the physical contiguity to go and buy any material good must not be the same. On the contrary: with museums half-empty, small museums where no one enters, with high ceilings and distant works, should always have been open. Not to have had queues at museums instead of supermarkets is to deny those values evoked by Mrs. Boschi, namely that we are that food which is a food of our soul, Machiavelli said so, Petrarch said so, it is more important even than eating and drinking: we have denied it.”

“Now,” Sgarbi concluded, “I ask you to deal quickly with the protocols. Don’t say ’we are working, we are trying, we are reasoning.’ You cannot even ask banks for an act of love: grotesque things! Use practical acts, say what needs to be done, and tell the truth. There is no risk in entering a museum, there is no risk in walking on a beach, there is no risk in being outdoors! The outdoors must be our new land of conquest. If this is not said, protocols will be fictions, lies, and culture a failed but declared aspiration as you have done and as we do in this Parliament.”

Sgarbi: idiotic to close beaches and archaeological sites, grotesque to close museums. Now Franceschini tells us what to do

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