Appeal of directors, critics and artists to Franceschini: "reopen museums"

Eighty-two art personalities, including museum directors, critics, art historians, curators, artists, collectors, gallery owners, and practitioners are appealing to Cultural Heritage Minister Dario Franceschini to call for the reopening of public museums. The appeal, promoted by the director of the Novecento Museum in Florence, Sergio Risaliti, was signed by several well-known names, including Cristina Acidini, Alfonso Artiaco, Paolo Canevari, Simone Frittelli, Stefano Karadjvo, Antonio Natali, Cristiana Perrella, Marinella Senatore, Laura Trisorio and several others. Below is the text.

We address this appeal to you, Minister, so that the concrete possibility of opening public museums in cases where regions, provinces and cities are defined as a “yellow zone” according to the criteria established by the government can be considered in the general plan for the safety and health of citizens.

Museums, as you certainly believe, have a social function and provide essential services to the cultural growth and well-being of people, contribute to psychological and spiritual health, the development of cognitive qualities and sensitivity. They are equipped and manned places that can guarantee accessibility in full compliance with health safety regulations.

Reasons inherent in inner-city mobility cannot stand in the way of their reopening, once other essential services and goods are assured to citizens in the yellow zone, such as in shopping malls bars and restaurants, hairdressers and rightly bookstores, all of which are accessible in terms of health safety.

Indeed, obvious contradictions emerge in the criteria adopted in the decision made, making purely economic assessments stand out. The decline in visitors, particularly that of international tourists, seems to have penalized public museums. However, where the closure persists, it may seem that the highest authorities starting with you, Mr. Minister, evaluate as unjustifiable the expenses incurred for the full functionality of the museums in the face of the low revenues obtained during this period. But we cannot and will not attribute such a narrow-minded and short-sighted view to those who govern us. Italy’s public museum system deserves quite different strategies to cope with the crisis and the changes imposed by it.

The democratic right to the enjoyment of artistic heritage and contemporary artistic production transcends the albeit appropriate commodity and quantitative parameters. And if the masses of tourists put into circulation by the ’desire for beauty’ are lacking at this time, the museum service has to remain in place for the benefit of citizens anyway.

We must not allow the continuation of this, which is a real interruption of service to the public, to impoverish the authentic meaning of cultural enhancement and block the regenerative function of conservation, in relation to the practices of cultural mediation, artistic updating, and those of research and education.

With closed museums, not only budgets suffer but citizens, and especially children, students, families, and all art lovers, those who wish to engage with the memory of the past and the experiments of the present in art.

Pictured: the Novecento Museum in Florence

Appeal of directors, critics and artists to Franceschini: "reopen museums"

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