Seven (bad) clichés about Italian art

by Federico Giannini, Ilaria Baratta , published on 13/07/2013
Categories: Opinions / Disclaimer
A series of bad clichés to debunk about Italian art, the kind we often hear repeated!

Anyone with the slightest interest in art history has come across one of these seven cl ichés about Italian art at least once in their life. Seven bad myths that often recur on the pages of newspapers or in the mouths of politicians and that it is necessary to dispel... so whenever you hear about one of these clichés, take a trip around here... !

1. Italian art is the country’s oil
The definition of art as Italy’s oil dates back to 1986 and is due to Gianni de Michelis, then Minister of Labor in the second Craxi government: according to theEncyclopediaTreccani1, De Michelis’s phrase was “Culture is Italy’s oil, and it must be exploited,” and was quoted by journalist Roberto Suro in an article that appeared on December 21, 1986 in the New York Times, entitled Saving the Treasures of Italy. It makes no sense to compare art to oil. Oil burns, oil exhausts: so do we want to think about burning and exhausting art? What’s more, if you want to start a serious discussion about art, you cannot think of it as a mere source of economic gain, because the functions of art are other and higher. For anyone who wants to learn more about the functions of art, we recommend an article written last year right here on our website: What is art history for?, to show that art is not marketing but is knowledge, emotion, education, civic sense.

2. Italy has 50-60-70... 90% of the world’s cultural heritage
Another particularly irritating and recurring cliché is the one that assigns Italy a percentage of the world’s artistic heritage, which, moreover, always varies, ranging from 50% to even 90%. There are no exact estimates of the world’s artistic heritage, and making such percentages is completely nonsensical. The only list that might resemble this phantom ranking of the world’s artistic heritage might be the list of UNESCO World Heritage cultural sites, but the reality is quite different from the imagination: Italy would have only a little more than 6% of the total. But we had already discussed this on our website as well: The fable of Italy having "50% of the world’s artistic heritage." Think twice before you make statistics that are completely out of whack! :-)

3. The Uffizi should have the same number of visitors as the Louvre
Every year, several newspapers and magazines report on the ranking of the most visited museums in the world compiled by The Art Newspaper: take for example the article signed by Carlotta Garancini and published on April 10, 2012 in Vanity Fair (just because it is one of the first we found on search engines). Often and willingly (however, this is not the case with this article, but see for example the first comment) we are “surprised” (to say the least) that our museums are far behind foreign museums: for example, the 2012 ranking was led by the Louvre and the first Italian museum was the Uffizi in 19th place. Those who assert that the Uffizi should have the same number of visitors as the Louvre are either unconscious or have never been to the Uffizi (or the Louvre). The Louvre has an area, reserved for galleries, of 60,600 square meters, while for the Uffizi it is 5,400 square meters (although new projects are expanding it, but at the time of the ranking, that was the area). Taking the data from the rankings at face value, it would therefore result that the Uffizi would have three times the ratio of visitors per square meter than the Louvre. It means that if for every square meter the Louvre attracts one visitor, the Uffizi attracts three. Is it still the case that the Uffizi should compete with the Louvre (or museums of similar size) as to absolute numbers? Or are our museums far too congested and should we think about decentralizing visitors to the busiest museums? Then we must consider that Italy has a widespread museum heritage, so it is quite normal that in places where there are fewer museums, the absolute numbers of visitors are higher than in our museums.

4. Museum tickets in Italy cost too much
In this case, it is enough to give a few examples. Let’s take the largest and most visited museums: a full ticket at the Uffizi or the Galleria dell’Accademia costs 6.50 euros. At the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Palazzo Barberini, admission costs 7 euros. More expensive are the Pinacoteca di Brera (10 euros) and the Galleria Borghese (11 euros plus 2 for mandatory reservation). But the Pinacoteca di Brera and the Galleria Borghese represent quite exceptional cases. Generally, the prices are far lower. Examples? The Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, 4 euros. Same price for the National Gallery of Palazzo Spinola in Genoa and the National Museums of Lucca (and to see both of them, the cumulative ticket is 6.50 euros). But there are also realities where tickets cost even less, for example, the museums of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan have a full price of 3 euros (7 euros the cumulative to see them all), and there are even museums with free admission, such as the Galleria dell’Accademia di San Luca in Rome. Many cities then have activated initiatives (cards, cumulative tickets, etc.) that allow you to visit many museums at a negligible expense. For example, in Perugia there is the Perugià Città Museo card, which for 10 euros allows access to five museums on the circuit in 48 hours. It also exists in a family version: with 35 euros, four people have access to twelve museums in a year: less than one euro per museum per person. It is clear then that “too much” and “too little” are relative concepts, but in the vast majority of cases, entering a museum costs less than having a mojito in a trendy club.

5. Italian museum deposits contain great hidden masterpieces
The deposits of Italian museums are very important, they have been defined by Tomaso Montanari as the "lungs through which the museum’s exhibition path breathes."2 But it is by no means true that they contain who knows what masterpieces that are hidden from public view. This myth was debunked by Bruno Zanardi, a restorer and professor of Theory and Technique of Restoration at the University of Urbino, in an article that appeared in Mondoperaio in October 2012 (and we recommend reading the article in its entirety as it also discusses other myths addressed in this article of ours)3: Zanardi explains that museums do not conceal works that could make “today’s radiant visitors increase by leaps and bounds,” but “in fact, these are almost only minor works, whose function is mainly to give a sense of cultural context to the major works on display, thus ’service’ works that are even more difficult to explain to a culturally unequipped audience, i.e., the vast majority of museum visitors.” And Bruno Zanardi gives this example: if in the museum we find a work by Leonardo, in the repository we will find a work by Marco da Oggiono, a Leonardo artist who had local fame, whose work is undoubtedly important in explaining the context within which the artist operated (i.e., the spread of Leonardo’s painting in 16th-century Lombardy), but who is certainly not perceived by the public as the “author of great masterpieces.” And yet, even Marco da Oggiono’s important works are often and frequently exhibited. Another contribution is Grazia Agostini ’s commentary that appeared to our article Affittansi opere d’arte italiane, in which the author, an art historian, discusses this very topic.

6. Public museums produce only losses, but with private management they would gain
This is another myth that is rather difficult to eradicate, by virtue of its longevity, which is probably only matched by that of “art as Italy’s oil” or that of “x% of the world’s heritage.” Meanwhile, the function of a museum should not be to produce economic profit, but to produce culture, and a museum has, socially, the same utility as, for example, schools. It is true that there is such a thing as a private school, but would it be smart and far-sighted to put the whole school in private hands? Coming back to us, the pursuit of profit and the production of culture, as Anna Coliva (current director of the Galleria Borghese in Rome) explains in an article in 2002 in Corriere della Sera4, are two antithetical operations: “if a managerial reform in museums were really configured, with a profit-seeking enterprise at the head as it is in its mission, side by side with the specialist who must instead uphold the even constitutional purposes of the museum, we would have the absurdity of two subjects with two different missions that, of course, cannot cohabit: one or the other must necessarily prevail.” In the same article, the author refers to the often misunderstood “American model”: according to the misunderstanders, this model would in fact leave the management of the museum to the private parties, giving them a way to generate profits. Far from it: many of the major American museums (such as MoMA or the Guggenheim) are run precisely by nonprofit organizations. Anna Coliva’s article deserves to be read carefully, as does the topic, which we deal with here in brief and in summary, but we do not rule out coming back to it with dedicated articles.

7. In Italy there is no money for culture
Let us just say that, every year, tax evasion costs Italy 180 billion euros. It is also well known that in 2011 Italy allocated only 1.1% of its GDP5 to culture (and the MiBAC “budget” is about 1.5 billion euros6). Who can believe that Italy lacks money for culture? :-)

Notes

1. See entry on Gianni De Michelis in theEncyclopedia Treccani website. ↑

2. Tomaso Montanari, From the Constitution to prostitution: the Wise Men’s plan for heritage, from Il Fatto Quotidiano, April 16, 2013. ↑

3. Bruno Zanardi, The Corte dei Conti’s mistaken report on artistic heritage and a hypothesis for economic growth in relation to artistic heritage and the environment, from Mondoperaio, October 1, 2012, no. 9, reported in Patrimonio SOS ↑

4. Anna Coliva, But the private museum in the U.S. is nonprofit, from Il Corriere della Sera, February 17, 2012 ↑

5. Italy last in public spending on schools and culture. Worse only Greece, from Il Sole 24 Ore, April 6, 2013 ↑

6. Cultural heritage: Bray, all government must make clear choices, from ADN Kronos reported on Yahoo! News, July 1, 2013 ↑


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