One idea: abolish free Sundays at the museum and think about more targeted offers and initiatives

It happens, during the first Sunday of the month, the one on which for almost four years the rite offree opening of all state museums, strongly desired by Minister Dario Franceschini, has been celebrated, that there are tourists who, once past the ticket office, ask, to the attendants, “and now what should we do?” It happens that there is the foreigner who reacts badly to the “good morning” of the checkroom attendant because, probably accustomed to frequenting discos more than museums, he is terrified by the idea of having to shell out a euro to use the service. It happens that there is the Italian woman who protests because, in the line to enter, she sees people of different nationalities in front of her and believes that being born south of the Alps guarantees her some phantom priority. It happens that there is the visitor who demands to visit the museum with his scooter. It happens that there is the incredulous visitor who asks at the ticket office which sections can be visited for free, evidently imagining that he or she is entitled to a kind of demo instead of the full tour. In municipal museums or private museums happen the visitors who are accustomed in a certain way and demand free admission there as well.

These are all true stories of the first Sunday of the month in state museums: one has to imagine them all concentrated in a small time frame to get an idea of the conditions under which museum employees work during these days that, perhaps, should be rethought or even canceled tout court, for several reasons. The first: it is enough to go to one of the most popular museums on the first Sunday of the month (and often it is not even necessary to visit it during the busiest tourist periods) to realize the chaos, the huddles, the queues and the inconveniences caused by the masses pouring into the cultural venues. Visiting a museum in situations of confusion is an experience that creates more harm than good: culture needs peace of mind to be enjoyed in the best possible way and, conversely, the crowding of the halls, the need to concentrate the visit in a short time, the necessary drops in attention caused by the impossibility of visiting the museum in ideal conditions represent factors that negatively affect the experience. Because it is impossible to enjoy a full and satisfying experience if you are forced to fight against saturated spaces, if you have to rely on a guide who is obliged to work under stress and has to hurry up because other groups are arriving, if you are faced with visitors who disrespect others, if you have to waste time in long queues in order to access the halls.

Photo of a free Sunday at the Reggia di Caserta, posted by Tomaso Montanari on the blog Articolo 9

The second: tour guides and museum workers are not the only people affected by stress during free Sundays. Heritage itself suffers from great crowding. With audiences increasing dramatically and with rooms being saturated by visitors who are often first-time museum visitors, the heritage stored in the halls is exposed to far greater risks than it would be under normal crowded conditions. The example of the Royal Palace of Caserta, where the danger of damage led director Mauro Felicori to have to limit access during free days, would suffice. In an article published in Repubblica last October 3, Felicori had stated that “the first Sunday of the month for the Reggia has always been a problem especially since the monument has been experiencing a period of great popularity and notoriety in the last two years. The minister’s measure of free Sundays in museums is very positive because it broadens the public of culture, but the management of the measure in Caserta is very problematic: we find ourselves having to simultaneously guarantee the protection of the monument and public order.” It is true that so far no damage has been reported during free Sundays: but that is still no reason to underestimate the danger.

Again: Mauro Felicori (like many others) argues that free Sundays have led to a broadening of the cultural audience. However, this is an observation at the moment unsupported by specific studiesî. It is true that, statistics in hand, since the institution of free Sundays has been introduced, the percentage of citizens who have never visited a museum during the year has dropped. But at the moment we are not in a position to have more in-depth data: we do not know who the typical visitors of “#domenicalmuseo” are, we do not know whether the visit entices them to return to cultural places, we do not know what other cultural activities those who go to the museum on the first Sunday of the month do, we do not know whether their experience was pleasant. Yes, the initiative is likely to grow the numbers, but then what? We can speculate that such an operation incentivizes casual attendance since, even in light of the data released at the beginning of the year by the ministry (and which tell us that 7 percent of the total visitors in 2017 were concentrated in just twelve days: those of free Sundays), it does not seem so far-fetched to assume that there is a part of the public (however, difficult to quantify, also because we have no data on new and returning visitors in the total of 50,103,996 who went to state museums last year) that waits for the first Sunday of the month to visit museums. Not to mention that free Sundays result in an important economic shortfall: that of tourists who, on those days, would have been willing to pay a fee to enter the museum anyway. Thinking instead about permanent free admission aimed at certain types of users could entice constant attendance.

Therefore, it should be considered that proposing free admission for everyone indiscriminately, one Sunday a month, makes little sense and is more like a commercial initiative than a real measure in favor of culture. Therefore, any abolition of free Sundays is not considered a serious loss. However, the abolition should be compensated with initiatives that, on the one hand, encourage habitual attendance and, on the other hand, meet the needs of that small minority consisting of potential visitors who do not go to museums because they consider the entrance fee to be excessively expensive (9.4 percent of the total, according to the 2016 Istat study on museum visitors). At the same time, it would be necessary to think of initiatives to spur those 41.8 percent of Italians who do not go to museums simply because they are not interested. Moreover, these are topics that have already been discussed extensively on these pages on several occasions. The Ministry should consider the idea of moving closer to European standards: in other countries there are discounts and free admission for those who are not employed, for those who go to the museum during the last hours of opening hours, for those who visit with the rest of the family, for those who bring friends, for those who have tickets to other institutions, theaters, concerts, and events that can be linked to the activities of museums. The idea of incentivizing regular attendance by creating networks between different institutions (or extending them) could also be interesting: think, for example, of the cards or subscriptions that in various cities in Italy allow you to visit many museums by paying a reduced fee. It would not, in essence, be a matter of reducing free admission. On the contrary: it would be a matter of rethinking them in a more inclusive and less demagogic way, and of providing measures that could encourage participation. This, and not mere number-crunching, should be thegoal of museums.

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