Minister Franceschini wants to bring artwork to schools. But schools need more

The initiative A Work of Art in the Classroom has yet to get off the ground, but it has already raised, at least on social media, numerous questions and several controversies. But let’s go in order. Meanwhile, what does the project wanted by Minister Dario Franceschini involve? The minister’s goal is to bring to schools some masterpieces of art kept in museums. According to what we learn from the Neapolitan edition of Repubblica, the first work to be exhibited will be Mattia Preti’s Madonna of Constantinople, a 1656 painting kept at the National Museum of Capodimonte. All this is “to bring back and educate students to the great beauty of our cultural heritage,” Franceschini says.

Outside of rhetoric (please: we can’t take any more of hearing the locution “great beauty” pronounced all the time, and inappropriately), the intent to educate the younger generations in art history is entirely shareable and, indeed, desirable. But in my opinion, this is not the correct way to do it. First, let us think of the initiative from a merely logistical point of view. Our Lady of Constantinople is not really a small picture of the kind that can be stored inside a bag: it is an altarpiece three meters high and two meters wide. Moving it has costs: transportation, insurance, labor. And additional costs will have to be incurred for the safety of the painting, assuming the works are exhibited in schools for more than a few hours: schools are not equipped with sophisticated alarm systems such as those needed to ward off something bad happening to the works. In fact, schools are often not equipped with alarms at all. Wasn’t the recent, obnoxious art thefts enough? So, to the budget would be added the expense of ensuring the safety of the artwork. Let us hope, then, that the ministry will at least have the good sense to leave the works in schools only during school hours, and then return them to museums.

Mattia Preti, Madonna of Constantinople (1656; oil on canvas, 286.5 x 196 cm; Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte), detail

And all this happens while there are schools that force parents of children and young people to self-tax themselves to make up for the shortage of materials needed for daily life among the desks. And as if that were not enough, the initiative takes on even more paradoxical contours when we consider that art history hours at school, despite proclamations and announcements, are still cut to the bone. So even if we brought the artworks to school (and I repeat: with all the problems that would arise in relation to the safety and security of the works), would we then have the teachers to explain them to the children? Does it make sense to cover the gaps in the school system with initiatives-slogans like this? Schools need more.

Let us then think about the educational side of such an initiative. Children and young people should be spurred to visit museums, churches, historic buildings. And thus be educated to respect cultural heritage. Let us ask ourselves whether it is respectful to move people and resources to move delicate works of art, when the same resources could be more wisely invested in enhancing education, improving our museums, providing schools with the materials they need, creating jobs for young people who can passionately explain art to children and young people, and so many other activities that are sorely needed.

Moreover, isn’t it disrespectful to instrumentalize schools to promote window-dressing initiatives? And to understand the scope of the initiative, it would suffice to ask a very simple question: what is the point of showing children a single work by Mattia Preti? What is the point of showing them a work taken out of its context? This is because, even if it is kept in a museum and therefore no longer in its original location, the painting in the museum is still related to other works, and therefore is part of a context. Rather, why are children and young people not being educated in a proper, and perhaps even fun, approach to museums, which are still considered by many to be places where one is bored?

Supporters of the initiative are already making comparisons with a similar project held last year in England, which involved the display of 26 masterpieces by artists such as Monet, Turner, Lowry and Gainsborough in 27 English schools. Assuming that one does not necessarily have to agree with everything coming from across the Channel (the same assumptions as the Italian one apply to the English project as well: isn’t it better to find different forms of art education?), it is probably superfluous to point out that the problems of Italian schools are not those of English schools (and vice versa), that in Italy the school system has pressing priorities that can no longer be postponed (lack of funds, often dilapidated and unsafe building stock, the weight of art history in teaching to be increased... ), and that in Italy we have a museum fabric intimately linked to the territory, which therefore lends itself to a type of education that should take children directly to the places of the works.

We often talk about the fact that proper art education is being replaced by the worship of fetishes. The initiative that is supposed to bring works of art to schools seems almost to configure itself as the opposite side of the same coin. One moves (or rather: tries to move) famous works of art in order to get hits and visibility: and this is to the detriment of seriously and rigorously organized exhibitions, and it is also to the detriment of a healthier approach to art on the part of the public. And in the same way, it seems that artworks are being taken to schools to show that the government cares about the fate of Italian art history. But in reality, the initiative looks more like an attempt to avoid thinking about the serious shortcomings of our school system (as well as the cultural heritage system) with a kind of grand exit, the kind that gets articles in the newspapers and guarantees plaudits for the creators. This is not what schools and museums need. But, of course, thinking of projects to improve teaching, to make schools safer, to make museums more attractive to children and young people, to do quality outreach, is much more difficult than bringing the works to school. And it doesn’t make people write articles.

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