Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli announced overnight the appointments of new first-rank directors for the five major museums that had been without a guide for months and for which a call for applications had been opened in March. These choices, made from among proposals received by the evaluation committee by the July 15 deadline, mark an important step in the institutional management of the state’s cultural heritage.
The Florence Academy Gallery and the Bargello Museums will be entrusted to Andreina Contessa, an art historian, scholar and museum curator. Francesco Sirano will head the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, while Federica Rinaldi has been appointed to the National Roman Museum. Paola D’Agostino takes over as director of the Royal Museums of Turin, and finally Simone Quilici has been chosen for the Colosseum Archaeological Park.
The appointments came despite the fact that the minister, in an interview given to Corriere (and then unpublished, but shared by Giuli on his social profiles), had said he was not satisfied with the trios proposed by the commission and was ready to reopen the call for nominations. Evidently, it was preferred to avoid a stalemate, taking into account the fact that the five museums had been without a director for months (they were led by interim directors) and that the selection process is governed by rules that do not give the minister any express prerogative to annul or reopen the procedure in the absence of formal or substantive flaws of legitimacy. The new directors will take office in the coming weeks. Here is who they are: below is some brief biographical information.
Andreina Contessa has headed the Friuli Venezia Giulia Regional Museums Directorate since May 2020, after leading the Miramare Castle Historical Museum and Park from 2017 until 2024. From Brescia, an art historian and scholar with expertise in museology, digital cataloging and multimedia, she holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and directed the Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem from 2009 to 2017. His international experience includes senior roles at foreign institutions, consolidated through years of academic and management work in the museum and cultural sectors
Francesco Sirano, Neapolitan, born in 1964, is an executive in the Ministry of Culture with a long career in the field of archaeology and territorial protection. He graduated with honors in classical literature in 1989, earned an archaeological specialization in Athens in 1993 and a doctorate in Naples in 1997. Since 1999 he has been an official of Mibact, with positions as director of the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the metropolitan area of Naples, and director of the Archaeological Park of Baia and Cumae. He later served as director of the Herculaneum Park, where he initiated a vision of cultural and spatial transformation, in collaboration with the Packard Humanities Institute, that included excavations, new repositories, a restoration laboratory and, in the future, the creation of Herculaneum’s first urban museum by 2027.
Federica Rinaldi, designated for the National Roman Museum, comes from ministerial technical cadres: in fact, she was an official at the Colosseum Archaeological Park. An archaeologist and expert in Roman mosaics, she graduated in classical literature in 1998 from the University of Padua, in 2001 she obtained a specialization in archaeology and in 2005 a doctorate of excellence, also in archaeology and also at the University of Padua. She was director of the National Museum Concordiese in Portogruaro and Head of the archaeological areas of Concordia, Jesolo, Altino (2010-2014, within the Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Veneto). Since 2015, she has joined the staff of the Special Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Rome and has been working at the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum since September 2017.
Paola D’Agostino, a Neapolitan, director of the Bargello National Museum from 2015 to 2023, is a scholar of ancient sculpture, particularly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and museology. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Naples ’Federico II’ in 2003, following a Master of Arts at the Courtald Institute of Art in London in 1998. From 2008 to 2013 she worked as Senior Research Associate in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; from 2013 to 2015 she was Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator in European Art at the Yale University Art Gallery. In 2019, she received the FIAC Excellency Award.
Simone Quilici, Roman architect and landscape architect, director since 2019 of the Appia Antica Archaeological Park, holds a degree in Landscape Architecture from La Sapienza University and a PhD in Urban and Environmental Design from the University of Florence. He has promoted projects to enhance cultural itineraries such as the Appian Way and the Via Francigena, using an approach that integrates technology, research and landscape protection. During his leadership, he introduced multimedia initiatives and restorations on archaeological sites, contributing to the optimization of the interaction between the public and archaeological heritage.
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