Public and private in museum management: how is the situation and what are the problems

Let us start with a premise: while it is true that the debate on public-private relations in the management of cultural heritage has intensified in recent years and that the rhetorical use of this pair of terms enjoys great fortune, data and experience show us a reality that goes in a completely different direction.

In the meantime, let us distinguish in four different categories of relationships, to which many others could be added: so-called patronage, sponsorship, partnership, and contracting out of services. These are totally different cases that cannot be subsumed under a single umbrella. However, all these practices came to the fore in the early 1990s with the introduction of important innovations due to the Ronchey Law and with the new structure of local governments. In the absence of specific legislation, public administrations began to equip themselves with more elastic instruments, private in nature, that would allow easier management of institutions and services and potentially open up to private participation, both in financial and governance aspects; in parallel, the public opened up to the possibility of receiving sponsorships.

The turn of the millennium thus witnessed the proliferation of variously conceived entities that met these characteristics: of all of them the most widespread is the “participation foundation.” Except in very rare cases, expectations of attracting private participation have been dashed, and “social” partnerships have mostly been limited to public entities (state, regions, provinces, municipalities, chambers of commerce). In 2010 there was a radical reversal of the trend: with Law 112 a series of limitations were introduced (reduction to five of the number of members of the boards of directors of investee entities, the abolition of emoluments for directors, limits in travel expenses, prohibition of sponsorship by public companies, etc.). Limits that permanently discouraged private individuals, already disinclined, from offering their own participation. Since then it has been a succession of new, often inconsistent and contradictory regulations that have increasingly subjected these institutions to the rules of public administration, gradually reducing the very reasons for which they were conceived. Moreover, without any specific legislation having yet been enacted to recognize the special characteristics of “cultural enterprises.”

The Tosio Martinengo Picture Gallery in Brescia (Brescia Musei Foundation)

On the other hand, as far as sponsorships are concerned, these were from the very beginning structured as their exact opposite; rather than a true synallagmatic relationship on the part of the sponsor, this practice was conceived as a public relations activity: I do not hope for a real return of commercial benefits from my donation, but I do it to open a privileged channel with the beneficiary administration. When the legislature then went to regulate these aspects, far from bringing order to an area in which the measurement of mutual benefits should be the basis and contracting the rule, it merely recorded and fixed a distorted practice by introducing the obligation of calls for proposals and multi-year planning.

Two boulders were then added to the regulatory superfetation mentioned above: the Cultural Heritage Code and the Procurement Code. And in assessing the combination of these two measures, we are helped by a ponderous study conducted by the Court of Auditors in 2016. Admittedly, it is not up to date as of today, but the data that emerges from it is eloquent, and the structural analysis photographs a situation that has not changed. The study shows that the contradictory nature of the provisions, coupled with the lack of a management culture of officials and the absence of real prospects of realizing profits for investors, rather than favoring has generated paralysis on both the project financing and sponsorship sides.

A counter-trend signal could be the Art Bonus, introduced five years ago to encourage donations from private individuals to cultural institutions. The rule provides a tax credit equal to 65 percent of the contribution to the donor. That is, to be clear, given a nominal contribution of 100 euros, 65 are borne by the state. Only incidentally, it is worth mentioning that the first to enjoy it were the historical contributors, who thus gained an unexpected advantage. It benefits opera and music institutions, including festivals, and public heritage management bodies. Thus, not only all private entities remain excluded, but also those intermediate entities that, while having a profile of a private nature, are established, financed and controlled by the public administration. On the other hand, according to Antonio Leo Tarasco (MiBACT executive ), in his volume Law and Management of Cultural Heritage, the revenue devolved to museums and archaeological sites under the direct management of the Ministry fluctuates around 1 percent of the total!

On the level of concessions for the management and entrusting of services, again, a lack of entrepreneurial vision on the part of the state should be noted, which has produced entrustments with over-decade extensions and confusion, often intentional, between the two activities, with returns that, except in rare if significant cases, become derisory.

Before concluding, a reference should be made to the much-quoted “Anglo-Saxon system” taken as a model to be imitated. None of the examples given above comes close to what happens in the United States or Great Britain, where all investments in cultural institutions are excluded from the tax field and thus a system of investment funds has been generated into which resources flow that generate financial as well as managerial profits capable of sustaining the management of museums and more. In that context, moreover, there is a fundamental reputational significance in participation in cultural and charitable foundations, which reverberates directly on the contributor’s corporate activities. More: investments in those countries do benefit the community, but they remain in a private sphere, never flowing into public finance; rather, as in the case of the recent renovation of the MoMA in New York, it is the state that contributes its own financial intervention to the private business. Are there good practices in Italy? Certainly, they can be counted on the tips of one’s fingers, and one could say that they defy a hostile environmental situation. I mention two particularly significant ones: the Egyptian Museum in Turin, as a management-entrepreneurial model, and the Brescia Musei Foundation as an example of governance extended to business realities and local communities. One wonders what should be done to improve this situation. There are timely ideas and proposals on this, but dealing with them would require more space.

This contribution was originally published in No. 8 of our print magazine Windows on Art on paper. Click here to subscribe.

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