Uffizi, destination for creative and original travel and communicators: a week of awards

The Uffizi Galleries increasingly on the shields: in the last week the Florentine museum led by Eike D. Schmidt has racked up a series of important awards. Opening the string last Friday was recognition from the British magazine Time Out, a historic periodical dedicated to travel, founded in 1968 in London. Time Out in particular ranked the Uffizi as the number one “best museum in the world,” in an article signed by journalist Sophie Dickinson. “There are so many dazzling classical works at the Uffizi,” Dickinson wrote, "that some visitors have been taken to the hospital because of the overwhelming sensation they cause (Florence is the birthplace of the Stendhal syndrome, after all). It doesn’t matter if you’ve already seen Botticelli’s Birth of Venus a thousand times, nothing prepares you for the impact with the actual masterpiece. And there are many other spectacular Renaissance paintings to admire, such as Caravaggio’s Medusa and Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes." In the rankings, the Uffizi is followed by the Louvre and MoMA in New York, which round out the podium, and then in the top 10 are the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, the Acropolis Museum in Athens, the Museum of Terracotta Warriors and Horses in Xi’an, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Tate Modern in London.

Still talking about travel, the Uffizi then obtained another important certification yesterday. In fact, the Uffizi Diffusi project and the imminent reopening of the Vasari Corridor are some of the reasons that led the world-famous travel guide Lonely Planet to include the city of Florence, the only Italian one, in Lonely Planet’s The Best of Lonely Planet, Best in travel 2022, the travel guide for the coming year presented just yesterday in the Tuscan capital and already available for purchase online. The Uffizi Diffusi project, with which the museum has decided, reads Lonely Planet’s explanatory statement, to transfer “part of the celebrated art collection to other locations in Tuscany in an effort to disperse the museum’s crowds and better share the priceless works of its Renaissance artists,” and the reopening of the passageway between the Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti that, “once the preserve of a few, will be accessible to all: one more reason to visit the city together with many other travelers,” have thus dragged Florence along.

“We are happy to have contributed to this great success of Florence, as part of the green tourism project promoted by Lonely Planet,” said Schmidt, “and we are happy to have done so through two of our most desired choices: the decentralization of tourist flows put in place with the Uffizi diffused and the upcoming opening of the Vasari Corridor.” A curiosity: in Best in Travel, alongside Florence, Freiburg, Eike Schmidt’s hometown, is included among next year’s must-see destinations. Completing the batch of European cities are the Irish capital, Dublin, and the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, while the other six locations that are part of this special list of cities to visit in 2022 according to Lonely Planet are all outside the Old Continent: they are Auckland (New Zealand), Taipei (Taiwan), Atlanta (United States), Lagos (Nigeria), Mérida (Mexico), and Gyeongju (South Korea).

But there’s more than just travel: the Uffizi also stands out on digital communication: today’s news is the news of the winning of the Brand Reporter Award for Digital Communication, awarded by Brand Reporter Lab, the research observatory on digital communication and information of the strategic consulting firm Brand Reporter Consulting, dedicated to institutions and companies that have distinguished themselves for using the Brand Journalism approach in their online communication. The Galleries were today awarded the prize in the “Best Digital Ecosystem” category: “For the creative use of the individual channels,” the motivations read, “with an original reference to current events, for the skilful use of influencers (v. Chiara Ferragni) and young languages in a commendable effort to bring the public in general and young people in particular closer to art. Also noteworthy is the surprising use of frontier social media such as TikTok.” Other awardees include Eni, Amazon, Startupitalia, Avio Aero, and Manpower. Speakers at the award ceremony, conducted by Observatory President Carlo Fornaro, included Tg1 journalist and professor of communication and marketing at LUISS Francesco Giorgino, Piero Dominici, professor of Sociology of Communication at the University of Perugia, and Uffizi Galleries Director Eike Schmidt, among others.

“The inclusion of the Uffizi diffuse project in the list of this year’s 100 most beautiful places published by Time Magazine, the Uffizi best museum in the world according to the international cultural magazine Timeout, now this prestigious award for museum communication,” Schmidt summed up in conclusion. “It is truly harvest time for the galleries, but these results are the fruit of the hard work and commitment of our dynamic and passionate team, which sustains and projects the museum into the future.”

Uffizi, destination for creative and original travel and communicators: a week of awards

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