Michelangelo Hall, former Uffizi director Antonio Natali: Museums be "places of dedication and not money-making machines"

We receive and publish below the remarks that the former director of the Uffizi, Antonio Natali, sent to the editorial staff of Finestre sull’Arte in response to Undersecretary Gianluca Vacca, who in recent days published the answer to Stefano Fassina’s parliamentary question asking what the position of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage was on the new layout of the Michelangelo room at the Uffizi.

The setting up of the Michelangelo room in Antonio Natali’s 2012 version. Ph. Credit Windows on Art

Uffizi, new layout of Room 41 (2018). Ph. Credit Finestre sullArte

Undersecretary Gianluca Vacca responded to Stefano Fassina’s question (an isolated voice, to whom I express my gratitude) asking the Minister of Cultural Heritage for an account of the dismantling of the room with Michelangelo’s Tondo Doni (which I conceived only a few years ago) and the subsequent arrangement (conceived by the new director) of a room dedicated to Michelangelo and Raphael. After Mr. Vacca’s feedback, some friends outraged by the heavy-handedness, but above all by the liniquity of the judgments he expressed, invited me to withdraw from that silence that I have chosen since my purge by Franceschini. However, I have no intention of breaking it this time either. The time will come; but this is not the occasion. If I must desist from the resolution I have imposed on myself, I will do so when I feel it is worthwhile. And that is not the case: too many errors, too much misinformation, too many things blatantly ignored, too much bias, too much amateurism in that response. I hold up as a model that specialist who, having to reply to people who were opinionated but far from the competence necessary to reason about a delicate subject, invited them to study, study and then re-study, in order to at least try to have a serious discussion.

To those friends who, in the face of unfounded criticism, tell me to make my voice heard clearly, I recall the words addressed by Pope Francis to journalists who asked him what he thought of the accusations being made against him from within the Church. Francis with his usual simplicity replied that each of them knew well how things really were and that therefore his opinion would only serve to fuel polemics useful only to those who want to harm the Church: in the case in question, those who know art history, have notions of museology and consider museums to be places of dedication and not money-making machines, look at the two projects for the Tondo Doni exhibition and give themselves an answer.

Finally, I am reminded of a phrase uttered by a left-wing politician (of great culture and belleloquence) when I told him of my regret that he had been a little too far removed from the public debate. He retorted with a few questions that mintristiated, but which I found difficult to rebut. He asked me and himself what was the point of talking in the present day; and talking to whom, if at all, and for whom. Around are told things said that people inexplicably believe, and if someone proposes another and more reliable interpretation of reality, he is not even listened to. This season too will pass, we concluded. Competence will once again prevail over approximation: today it is the role that confers competence; but the country will march again only when it is understood that the opposite is the case, that is, when it is competence that determines the role.

The layout of Michelangelo’s room in Antonio Natali’s 2012 version. Ph. Credit Friends of the Uffizi Gallery

Uffizi, new layout of Room 41 (2018). Ph. Credit Windows on Art

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