Talking in Italy about cultural heritage and protection: is it stuff for old men?

In an article that appeared on November 30 in Articolo 21, Vittorio Emiliani sketched what, in his opinion, would seem to be a desolating panorama of theinformation on cultural heritage that can be found in the media nowadays: it would be, in other words, reduced to a scanty collection of feeble and subdued voices, when not “reduced to silence” (as the title of the piece signed by the expert journalist reads) due to their misalignment with the policies of the current government. Proposing this observation to the reader, Emiliani follows up in his article with a long list, cloaked in an ill-concealed nostalgic vein, of the already meager number of journalists and specialists who “dealt with the subject by arguing the case for protection” in perhaps happier times, with the addition of the adventurous few who continue to deal with it now. A list consisting of journalists and specialists in good numbers no longer with us. And the remainder, minus Tomaso Montanari, are all over half a century old.

Therefore, scrolling through Vittorio Emiliani’s article line by line, a doubt cannot but arise: in Italy, has the protection of cultural heritage really become a subject capable of being dealt with only by aged specialists or at most, with a few exceptions removed, close to senescence, or is the list proposed in the intervention not sufficiently exhaustive? In order to solve the dilemma, it is necessary to reason that the reasons for the lack of media interest in all topics concerning preservation have rather complex origins, and I believe that the distinguished specialists who have been dealing (and continue to deal) with the subject for decades are not entirely blameless. Or at least, this feeling arises in me more vividly than ever during every time I happen to attend a meeting or conference on the topic of guardianship: finding one of my peers often becomes a feat on the edge of the possible.

The logics of communication have undergone radical changes in recent years: the era in which, in order to inform ourselves, we were limited to leafing through one of the major broadsheet newspapers or turning on the television on the few networks with national coverage has come to an end. Information, in contemporary society, travels on a multiple number of levels and can be enjoyed on different channels. Television, radio and newspapers have been joined by the Web, but it would still be reductive to limit ourselves to counting the mere means of dissemination: in fact,television offerings have increased, which has been expanded for some years with thematic channels now accessible even to those without satellite television, and the first-generation websites (those that, in essence, traced the typical way of communicating of newspapers, replicating the distance and lack of communicability between the writer and the reader) have been joined by blogs, social networks, forums, and communities. And as if that were not enough, the increasing ease with which digital content can be produced has led to the creation of a vast number of channels through which a reader can inform himself. As a result, the reader of 2015 tends to be one who has less and less time to read, has to filter through more and more content, and above all is no longer a passive actor in communication. Whoever reads an article has, at his or her disposal, a vast array of tools that allow him or her to express his or her thoughts and often to come into direct contact with the author: possibilities that, until a few years ago, were not even imaginable.

As a result, the segment of readers most inclined to change has shifted to new media. The latest Audipress surveys show that, in the last three months, out of about forty million Italians who have read a printed newspaper at least once, only ten million belong to the under-35 age group: that is, 25 percent of the total. We do not have precise data regarding readers interested in cultural heritage (and art history in general), but I can provide as an example the demographic data of the readers of our website, Windows on Art: out of a sample of just over 32,000 visitors who entered the website from November 1 to 30 (i.e., about half of the total), almost 13,000 were under 35 years old. This is a percentage of more than 40 percent. And the numbers are similar on our Facebook page: in that case we have absolute figures available, which tell us that 35% of the audience is under 35 years old. While it is true that Windows on Art has never adopted particular strategies to attract an audience of the young and very young, it is equally true that a not insignificant part of the public interested in conservation issues informs itself through non-traditional means: the list provided by Vittorio Emiliani is, therefore, necessarily incomplete. Those who want to speak to a wider audience can no longer limit themselves to newspaper readers or viewers of cultural broadcasts, or even to websites that favor a top-down approach, such as almost all those mentioned by Vittorio Emiliani in his article: it is necessary to dive deeper, to confront those who communicate through the second-generation web, to understand the audience. Those who deal with the complex subject of cultural heritage protection must, in essence, understand that it is no longer possible to wait for the audience to come of its own accord: we must be the ones to change our perspective and create our own audience.

It also seems to me very strong, and perhaps even exaggerated, to assert that “those who do not align themselves with the government are reduced to silence.” It is now well known that, as many point out (beginning with Tomaso Montanari in his A cosa serve Michelangelo?), newspapers have been reduced to informing about art history and cultural heritage almost exclusively on the occasion of events that they can talk about in sensationalist tones (for example, high-sounding attributions and sensational discoveries that then turn out to be resounding hoaxes) or to promote larvae advertisements of exhibitions dictated for the most part by commercial rather than cultural logic. But those who have the interests of preservation at heart have at their disposal other channels of communication, capable of establishing an equally fruitful dialogue with the public: the most branded mistake one can make nowadays is to continue to entrench oneself within one’s own group, always addressing the same people. Sure: there will be some who will perhaps take comfort from the mistaken and narcissistic belief that they belong to a small band of the last few rare and stoic repositories of knowledge on certain topics. However, it is necessary to inform those who bask in such a belief that closure to the outside world, unwillingness to engage in confrontation, and inability to keep up to date and look beyond one’s own narrow circle, play against the interests of advocacy.

I do not believe, in essence, in the fact that cultural heritage is a matter for old men, nor am I inclined to believe that those who do not conform to certain lines find themselves constrained by the impossibility of making their thoughts known. Instead, I believe it is necessary to change the paradigm: one can start by thinking about building a community that is not afraid of confrontation with younger colleagues or that does not consider it dishonorable to open up to new channels of communication. A stronger, more nurtured, more up-to-date and more willing community will be able to create for itself a larger and more diverse audience than the current one: if we lack the will (or interest) to change and open up, we will still be forced for a long time to regret the past and lie down on the idea that the only alternative to confrontation and updating is silence.

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