Museums on singers and works 20 years overdue: are these Franceschini's priorities?

I think common to many people is the sense of satisfaction felt last week on receiving the news of the allocation of twelve million euros, by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, to complete the long-standing affair of Isozaki’s Loggia, the great work that will complete the Uffizi exit. And I admit that this contentment led me to have a “finally” added to the title of the article that, on Windows on Art, we dedicated to the announcement. Perhaps that adverb communicated too much complacency, but there is also the fact that the case has been dragging on for more than twenty years, that Piazza del Grano is still an unresolved construction site, and that we are fed up with seeing that indecent mess in the heart of Florence, with a huge crane that has been a permanent part of the city’s skyline for years now (who knows if it already qualifies for a Superintendent’s Office bond!), and with a chaotic square and an exit that is not up to the standard for a museum of the importance of the Uffizi.

Of course, we could argue for hours about the appropriateness of the design, or how relevant it still is, and thus how good the idea of building contemporary architecture twenty years after it was designed, at least in the forms in which it was originally intended. Certainly, something needs to be done in Piazza del Grano to avoid prolonging the decades-long construction site of the Uffizi exit to the bitter end, and it is good to keep asking the question. Perhaps there is an even more upstream question, however, for which a premise is needed: the resources made available for the Isozaki Loggia are part of the strategic plan "Grandi Progetti Beni Culturali," which reserves 103 million euros for eleven interventions in different cities in Italy. Thus, between works that are twenty years overdue and resources for unseen museums and construction sites, it comes natural and spontaneous to wonder what Minister Franceschini’s strategy is and what his priorities are at such a delicate historical moment, with museums struggling to reopen (one example among many, and which we have also denounced on these pages, is that of the National Museum of Ravenna, which without volunteers is forced to close five days out of seven), cities that have been literally abandoned by tourists, and libraries and archives that are noting very strong difficulties.

Rendering of Isozaki’s Loggia.

Evidently for Franceschini it is not strategic or a priority to invest in improving the existing, but to open new museums and start pharaonic construction sites, in places that moreover already have varied and structured cultural offerings. It is difficult to understand how strategic it is, for example, to allocate 4.5 million euros to open, in the heart of Florence’s historic center, a Museum of the Italian Language, which will be administered by a City of Florence that has had considerable difficulty in managing its museums during the summer of the Covid-19 pandemic, with late openings and museums that are still closed. And all this while libraries, that is, the first and most important presidia, along with schools, for the “promotion” of the Italian language, languish and suffer.

It also seems totally senseless to spend 3 million euros for a useless “House of Ligurian Songwriters” in Genoa, a museum advocated for years by the regional councillor for culture and which will be located in a decentralized pole (the abbey of San Giuliano, already almost completely restored and recovered, and moreover already in use), but of which there is not the slightest need, in a city where there is no shortage of facilities and initiatives that already enhance local songwriting and its history, where there are museums with major active restoration sites, and where, among other things, the city administration complained as recently as May about the unsustainability of the costs of securing some existing venues. And again, one wonders what is the point of investing 5 million euros to redo from scratch the Park of Palazzo Te in Mantua, i.e., a site that is much frequented by citizens, well-maintained, and does not have any serious critical issues: but is this really the time to spend precious resources on a makeover? And again: is this the time to allocate 20 million euros to the expansion of the Venice Arsenal? Or to focus on a museum dedicated to Christo’s The Floating Piers in Monte Isola, a project also criticized locally?

One could object by pointing out that these are investment expenditures and not operating expenses, and so it would be improper to point out that the ministry opens new museums when old ones do not have enough staff to keep them open, or close if there is a lack of volunteers. But they are nevertheless new structures that will have operating costs in the future, and that often intervene in realities for which balances may not necessarily break down: the case of Florence, in this sense, is definitely exemplary.

And this is without forgetting the fact that almost all of the 103 million are concentrated on large cities (Florence, Rome, Venice) or on important tourist realities (Rimini, Monte Isola, Mantua). The only exceptions to this pattern are the Archaeological Park of Laus Pompeia in Lodi Vecchio and the Archaeological Park of Sibari (the latter, moreover, the only intervention funded in the South: out of 103 million, only 3 go south of the capital). While it is true that the pandemic was supposed to push the ministry to focus on grassroots tourism and the strengthening of facilities in the territory, also with the aim of pushing citizens to be more involved in the cultural life of their cities, with the strategic plan “Great Cultural Heritage Projects” it seems instead that the opposite direction has been taken, with investments on well-established realities, probably in view of the recovery of mass tourism when Covid-19 will be just a bad memory and when we will be able to cut ribbons with pomp and circumstance again, and patience if it will be difficult to manage everything afterwards. In the meantime, the Roman ships of Comacchio and Ravenna will continue to lie in wait to be restored, the National Archaeological Museum in Crotone will continue to go without air conditioning, many museums will continue to have nineteenth-century setups and collections that are not online, libraries to lack the endowments for acquisitions, several restoration sites or excavation areas will continue to go slow. We will be able to see Giorgio Gaber’s lambretta at the House of Songwriters, though. These are results.

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