It has now been a year since the closure of the Museum of the Opera del Duomo of Orvieto (MODO) without yet knowing when and how the institution will reopen. It was Aug. 29, 2024, when the president of the Opera del Duomo of Orvieto, Andrea Taddei, gave an account of the imminent closure of the museum in order to cope with refitting works that, according to what he made known at the time in an interview with the OrvietoLife news outlet, would not be “remarkable.” “The will,” Taddei said at the time, “is to review the paths by tying them chronologically, then we want to take advantage of the upper floor of the Greek Museum because we have many works that are not on display.” Still the president informed of the existence of a plan approved by the council and a project “entrusted to consultants who deal with museum layouts.” The economic issue was also being discussed at the time: “the whole amount is not huge but the Opera del Duomo can intervene directly only for a part. The rest we have to find perhaps through funds dedicated to the preservation of the artistic heritage. In scale we would like to replicate the operation of our counterpart in Florence with whom we have had and have contacts. They have invested several million euros to redo the whole museum part. We need much less but the idea is similar.”
Taddei felt that a year’s closure would even be excessive. But now exactly one year has passed since the museum’s lockout, and there is still no date for reopening. Going to the MODO website, one can read only a meager notice that reads, “As of 01/09/2024 the Museum of the Opera del Duomo of Orvieto will be closed to the public for redevelopment work, until a date to be determined. The Emilio Greco Museum and the Underground of the Duomo will be regularly open.”
The Orvieto community has been denouncing the situation for months. And of the project, Giordano Conticelli, an Orvieto art historian and last year’s candidate for mayor for the City Council on the Nova list, lets us know, “the contents are not known, it has not been presented to or discussed with the city, and any request for clarification - made even formally - has been rejected. Therefore, the way in which the protection and enhancement of a heritage is now entrusted to an entity whose management appears opaque and controversial is a cause for concern.”
At the end of February, some city councilors (from the PD and several civic lists) had also addressed a written question to the mayor Roberta Tardiani to find out what interventions were needed, whether a project for the work had already been carried out, how much it will cost the whole thing, how the necessary resources would be found to meet the expenses, when the works would begin and when they would end, what works would be moved to the Claudio Faina Museum (as had been announced earlier) and, if so, how they would be contextualized, whether there were plans to integrate the Cathedral and Faina Museum tickets, what plans there were for Palazzo Soliano (one of the MODO’s venues). In her response, the mayor merely pointed out that the only ones who can give answers are the president and the board of directors of the Opera del Duomo di Orvieto, and that the city administration hopes for maximum collaboration between the Opera and the city’s other entities and institutions.
A certain number of works, however, Conticelli lets us know, have since been moved: “Some,” the art historian explains, “have been transferred to the Museo Faina, without the criteria, methods or duration of this choice being clarified. Others - such as the great sixteenth-century altarpieces - have been repositioned inside the Cathedral, with solutions that raise questions both on the level of protection and conservation and on the museological and museographic level: works conceived for Baroque altars are now found hanging along the aisles, with consequences that risk compromising their stability and original meaning. Still others, including the famous Reliquary of the Corporal of Ugolino di Vieri, along with many other artifacts, have remained inside the currently closed Papal Palaces: what is their state of preservation today? The affair highlights an increasing distance between the Fabbriceria and the community.”
Conticelli also laments the fact that the Opera del Duomo “does not seem to want to act in transparency or respond to those who ask for information,” while "elsewhere, large cultural institutions are taking opposite paths: the National Gallery in London, for example, has set up a citizen assembly to directly involve citizens in the governance of the museum. This is not, of course, a matter of ceding scientific management to non-specialists (and a scientific director the MODO would have one, but it has been blacked out for months), but of recognizing that a museum, especially a public one, does not belong to those who administer it, but to the community. Orvieto is not London, clearly, but the difference in approach is glaring. Here heritage is managed without transparency, without confrontation and with a worrying approximation."
After the question in the city council, the Nova association in March had also asked for a meeting with President Taddei, but this was refused. “An alarming sign of institutional closure and isolation”: this is how the association commented on the incident. Meanwhile, a few weeks earlier, the president, through an interview, let it be known (it was early February), that for the museum a “scientific study commission composed of eminent art historians, Italian scholars and representatives of the Opera Council” had been “established,” and that “after several inspections in recent months,” the first elements for the design of spaces, exhibition elements, technologies and installations were “emerging. This will make it possible to plan precisely the time, cost and mode of intervention. The Council will then identify the necessary funding sources. In the meantime, as of Jan. 1, the entrance fee to the Cathedral complex has been updated to 8 euros, to allow for partial coverage, to which external contributions and resources will be added as they are being recognized.” In essence, five months after the spaces were closed, the project and costs were evidently still being worked out.
However, it is not just a question of what: it is also a question of how. “The question,” says Conticelli, “is not only whether a project for the MODO exists or not, but why, if it really exists, it has not been shared with the citizenry, who are the true owners of that heritage. Clarity and transparency must be complemented by competence: a museum and its collections require thoughtful choices based on sound scientific and museological criteria, not hasty or opaque decisions. Restoring a true civic profile to Orvieto’s Museo dell’Opera del Duomo means guaranteeing a certain future for a heritage that belongs to all of us.”
At the moment, the only sign of life is the aforementioned transfer of some works to the Claudio Faina Museum: the move took place in April, when the exhibition Grandi Maestri dal Museo dell’Opera del Duomo di Orvieto - da Simone Martini a Luca Signorelli- opened in the institute’s spaces. On that occasion, the only one to make a mention of the museum’s situation was Superintendent Francesca Valentini, who explained that the operation stemmed from “the need to secure the rooms of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo from a climatic and structural point of view.” And the Superintendency had also agreed to the relocation of some of the Museum’s works inside the Cathedral “to ensure the enjoyment in continuity and at the same time the maximum protection of the works.” On the timing of the works, however, no indication: we tried to contact the Opera del Duomo of Orvieto by phone today to get information, but we could not speak to anyone able to answer us.
Just this morning, moreover, the Claudio Faina Museum issued a statement informing the press about its results since the beginning of the year: 7,199 visitors from the beginning of the year to August 31, a 30 percent growth over last year, when the institute was already the most visited of Umbria’s archaeological museums. The museum informed that the success was also possible thanks to "agreements with the Opera del Duomo of Orvieto that allowed the setting up of the exhibition Great Masters from Simone Martini to Luca Signorelli in the museum spaces." In any case, five months after the opening of the exhibition, there is still no closing date, a sign that, perhaps, the stay of the MODO works at the Faina Museum will not be short-lived.
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