The director of the Ducal Palace in Mantua: Stalinist management from Bonisoli. Bureaucracy is produced in Italy, not art

Comparing Italy’s post-Reform Bonisoli cultural heritage to the GDR, the director of the Ducal Palace in Mantua, Peter Assmann: after a harsh interview with Corriere della Sera by Cecilie Hollberg, who was removed from her post as director of the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, the minister of cultural heritage, Alberto Bonisoli, today receives torpedoes from the Austrian art historian, who arrived in the city of Gonzaga in 2015 to direct the museum in Piazza Sordello.

In an interview with the newspaper La Stampa(full text here) Assmann says that “Minister Bonisoli’s is a Stalinist way of running things,” points the finger at the way Hollberg saw his experience in Florence end (“See what they did to my colleague? Fired overnight with an email”), criticizes the Italian situation (“we were overwhelmed by bureaucracy and then we got bogged down in the political swamp of this last year”) and expresses strong disagreement with the conception of culture according to Bonisoli: “his idea of culture is certainly not mine. From the first meeting with him we directors understood that what was being set in motion was a counter-reform. Which is starting just days before the end of his term. There will be problems for everyone.”

The decree that kicked off the reform, according to Assmann, “has a Stalinist approach. Until now, directors could rely on the museum board of directors with which to decide how to manage funds, sponsorships, and which partnerships to initiate. From now on everything will be in Rome’s hands. Museums will completely lose their autonomy. And who in Rome will be able to guarantee quality and financial support? The minister, who never knows anything?” And then the lunge: “such a thing I have seen done only once: when I worked in East Germany.”

Assmann also confirms the fears we had also expressed on these pages, namely the sinking of small museums as a result of the amalgamation of Brera and the Cenacolo Vinciano: “the advantage is only for Brera, which will have more money in the till. But how will the other museums in the regional hub survive?” Finally, Assmann suggests that those working abroad should not come to Italy as directors. “This country does not need art historians, it needs lawyers. Only bureaucracy is produced here, not art.”

Pictured: Peter Assmann. Ph. Credit Franz Johann Morgenbesser

The director of the Ducal Palace in Mantua: Stalinist management from Bonisoli. Bureaucracy is produced in Italy, not art

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