Sgarbi: museums, season of foreign directors over

A more lapidary than usual Vittorio Sgarbi is back on the subject of foreign directors of state museums. The undersecretary of culture, interviewed by journalist Stefano Zurlo last night at the Hotel Principe di Piemonte in Viareggio as part of the festival Gli incontri del principe (during which Sgarbi, curiously enough, showed up dressed as Brigante Chiavone to celebrate the feast of the banner of Arpino, the municipality of which he is mayor), was very direct on Zurlo’s question about his judgment on foreign directors: “They are leaving now,” he replied. “We have arrived, they are leaving. Why do I have to put a foreign director in the Uffizi? But have you ever seen that in the world? Have you ever seen a foreigner go to the Louvre?”

The audience therefore applauded decisively, and a few “bravoes” of approval also rose from the hall. “You can put foreigners,” Sgarbi continued, “since we have 490 state museums, 60 of which are autonomous, there is a director general and officials in them, so you can put any foreigner anywhere, but the top . ! Have you ever seen a foreign prefect, a foreign magistrate, have you ever seen a foreign ambassador? Symbols are symbols, it’s not like we have to defend our genetic identity.... ”.

Sgarbi, in continuing his own reasoning, attributed the presence of foreign directors in Italian museums to former minister Dario Franceschini, “who,” the current undersecretary continued, “thought that it was necessary to put many foreigners and many women, so it was all done according to balances. By now it’s all women in museums, so . anyway they will simply compete. But this season is over.” And then the jabs against the current directors of Brera, Uffizi and Capodimonte (James Bradburne, Eike Schmidt and Sylvain Bellenger, respectively) and especially against the former director of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, Austrian Peter Aufreiter, who left the post at the end of his term and was replaced by Luigi Gallo. “In Brera certainly what is there will no longer be there. In Florence what is there will be no more. In Naples what is there will be no more. Foreigners will leave no trace. There was a foreigner in Urbino who did only wrong things. He left, an Italian came and does beautiful things. Today the National Gallery in Urbino is worth seeing because it has been fixed up by a person who has common sense. If we have universities, students, scholars, and we think they cannot make a museum work, then we may as well close Italy. Will a young Italian have the right to work in a museum? Does one have to come from Scotland or I don’t know? I don’t understand.”

Sgarbi: museums, season of foreign directors over

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