Venice, Brugnaro shock: museums closed? There are no tourists, we can't throw money away

Shocking sentences were uttered the day before yesterday in a press conference by the mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, on the issue of civic museums: the institutes managed by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, in fact, will remain closed until April 2021, according to what the unions reported this week, and the workers will remain on 100 percent layoff. No comment has come from the Foundation so far, but the first citizen has been very clear: the closure would be determined by the fact that Venice, due to the health emergency, is unable to welcome tourists. In short, according to the mayor of Venice, the museums of Venice probably have to open only in function of tourists: patience for the citizens who will not be able to count on an extremely important cultural and social garrison.

“Next year will not be so easy, the beginning is hard,” Brugnaro premised, “I want to say this because I have seen today in the newspapers bouncing yet another controversy and instrumentalization: in Covid period it is not correct, it is not nice, especially because you scare the workers and their families. I’m thinking of the civic museums: this issue I want to clarify, I take complete responsibility for direction on what are the municipality’s investee companies. The goal is to keep them ready to be usable when tourists return to this city. So, I want to make it very clear, the budget that has been approved on my recommendation of the Museums Foundation of course is for the first quarter starting from today’s situation, which is the absolute zero in the historic center as you all know and it’s very evident. But it has also been well clarified that every month we will do an update of this budget, just to update it against what is the real situation in the city. We are going to work precisely to reopen, but out of a sense of responsibility we obviously cannot throw energy and money to the wind, it would be a fiscal damage for everybody. We have to keep ourselves ready to use instead every glimmer of light that we see and be ready at that moment, and not instead to bleed ourselves dry at the moment when, good or bad, we manage instead with difficulty for everyone, it is obvious, to save the business, which is the first thing. It applies to the civic museums but this also applies to the casino, it applies to all the investee companies.”

It seems an eternity since, a year ago, Brugnaro himself published with satisfaction the results of the economic management of the Civic Museums of Venice, which the first citizen called “the leader in Italy for financial autonomy.” An autonomy that now, unfortunately, in the absence of those tourists who made it possible, is proving to be a sad boomerang for the city’s museums.

Venice, Brugnaro shock: museums closed? There are no tourists, we can't throw money away

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