Venice, appeal to ask ministry not to merge Palazzo Grimani with archaeological museums

An appeal to prevent the Museum of Palazzo Grimani in Venice from being merged with the archaeological museums in the lagoon. This is launched by a group of academics and academics after the publication of the February 9, 2024 ministerial decree with the new organization of state museums. In fact, the decree provides for, among the new autonomous museums, an institute called “National Archaeological Museums of Venice and the Lagoon,” which includes the National Archaeological Museum of Venice, the National Archaeological Museum of the Lagoon of Venice - Isola del Lazzaretto Vecchio, the Museum and Archaeological Area of Altino, and, precisely, the Museum of Palazzo Grimani. According to the appeal’s drafters, however, this is a choice that lacks scientific foundation and “denotes, at best,” the appeal reads, “a serious misrepresentation of the history of this place and its functions, as well as the exceptional work that has been conducted there in recent years.”

Until now, the Museum of Palazzo Grimani was part of the Veneto Regional Museums Directorate, and is known to the general public mainly for the presence of the famous “Tribuna Grimani,” strongly desired by Giovanni Grimani (1506-1593) to place there the most important collection of antiquities ever seen in Venice. “As the Directorate’s website still states,” the appeal reads, “the reconstitution of the Tribuna inaugurated in 2019 with a substantial nucleus of works from the (formerly) National Archaeological Museum of Venice by virtue of the testamentary legacy of the family’s two greatest collectors of the modern age - Domenico and Giovanni Grimani - represents ’the reconstruction of one of the most significant episodes of European museology.’ What connotes the Tribuna therefore is not so much the presence of archaeological works, but the restitution of the mode of display, enjoyment and cultural interpretation that the modern age assigned to such works.”

It follows that “The Tribune is not just any exhibition site, just as Palazzo Grimani is not just a container of ancient sculptures. In both cases we are dealing with works of art from the Renaissance period, in which the presence of an archaeological collection has a precise meaning, namely the reappropriation of the ancient (with, moreover, a strongly political connotation) and its canonization in a city that obviously had no Greco-Roman past to boast. Among other things, the halls of the palace house the most important pictorial testimonies of Tuscan-Roman Mannerism, which landed in Venice precisely thanks to the mediation of the Grimani family, who had strongly desired artists of the caliber of Francesco Salviati, Giovanni da Udine and Federico Zuccari for the decoration of their ’Roman-style’ residence.”

“The interventions carried out in recent years,” the appeal continues, "have effectively intended the palace as a living testimony to the history of the Venetian patriciate in the modern age, its collecting and its patronage, a place in which to restore, through a slow and capillary work of study, the cultural and collecting events of the Grimani family well beyond the chronological limits linked to the presence of the collection of ancient sculpture. This is certified by transactions such as the purchase of the Portrait of Giovanni Grimani attributed to Domenico Tintoretto (donation from the Venetian Heritage Foundation), or that by pre-emption of Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well by Luca Giordano. “Thanks to the hard work of those who direct and have directed it, and of all the staff who work there with dedication and sacrifice,” the text of the appeal continues, “the Museum of Palazzo Grimani has been in recent years among the most active both in the study of precise ways through which to present its collections, and in terms of cultural initiatives, succeeding in attracting a very large audience of citizens, students and visitors (including the very young). The museum has been able to present itself as one of the most lively institutions on the Venetian scene, conceiving its civic mission also as the transmission and sharing of knowledge. Concrete evidence of this are the agreements with institutions of various kinds, from universities to associations active in the area, which have enabled it to position itself as a privileged interlocutor for virtuously cultural operations, responding fully to the educational mission that is among the prerogatives of museum institutions. It cannot be unmentioned that, behind the choice made by the Ministry, one can sense a process underway on many fronts, namely that of the total devaluation of the disciplinary competence of art history, which is worrying not for reasons of corporatism, but rather for the deleterious effects that the lack of specific knowledge can cause to history, culture in general and certainly to the preservation and enhancement of heritage.”

According to the appeal’s drafters, “The new reorganization that effectively transforms Palazzo Grimani, no longer a museum, into a ’leg’ of the new ’Archaeological Museums of the Lagoon’ will result moreover in a loss of technical-scientific autonomy and consequently in an absence of autonomous direction (and therefore of planning), which strongly risks distorting the history, the memory and the very sense of this place. In the background, we see the risk (purely theoretical: but there is no shortage of similar cases) of transforming Palazzo Grimani into a reservoir of statues to be drawn on for easy loans, into a container for exhibitions or even worse (if worse comes worse) into a place to be rented out for lavish private events.”

“As citizens, as scholars and scholars, as representatives of the world of culture and associations,” the appeal concludes, “we ask Minister of Culture Sangiuliano to reconsider a choice that, as is evident, does not rest on any cultural reason. In addition to taking away from the City and the Nation the peculiarities of a unique place in the world, transforming the Museum of Palazzo Grimani into a rib of the Archaeological Museums of the Lagoon contradicts and even cancels the effects of a virtuous planning that has been able to count in recent decades on conspicuous investments, including from the State.”

Among the first signatories are Valentina Sapienza (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Filippomaria Pontani (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Stefania Ventra (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Tomaso Montanari (University for Foreigners of Siena), Stefania Mason (formerly University of Udine - Tiziano Foundation), Mario Infelise (Ca’ Foscari University Venice), Lucia Tomasi Tongiorgi (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei), Gigetta Dalli Regoli (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei), Michel Hochmann (École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris). To sign the appeal, simply send an email to appelloperpalazzogrimani@gmail.com indicating your name, surname and institution.

Image: the Tribune of Palazzo Grimani. Photo: Matteo De Fina

Venice, appeal to ask ministry not to merge Palazzo Grimani with archaeological museums

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