Thinking of going to work in an Italian museum? Don't.

The post you are reading is my translation of an article written by Anna Somers Cock that appeared the day before yesterday, July 15, in The Art Newspaper. Here is the link to read the original. It is certainly a thought-provoking article about the situation of many Italian museums. Happy reading!

Thinking of going to work in an Italian museum? Don’t.
The Anglo Canadian director of Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi may be another victim of local power games.

For at least fifteen years, Italian politicians and cultural commentators have been complaining that museums in Italy lag behind those in the U.S. and Britain: often dirty, sometimes unconcerned about their collections, with bad captioning apparatus, exhibiting unimaginatively, throwing themselves into meaningless attempts at expansion, and being, with few exceptions, incapable of attracting a large and wide audience.

Every now and then, a foreigner, such as James Bradburne, is appointed, hoping to bring some of that magical know-how, only to dispose of it in a humiliating, destructive and unprofessional way; something that in America and Britain would be inconceivable.

There are three reasons why this happens: first, museums are seen as political pawns, to be moved around in local power games; second, there is the widespread belief that money should be made directly from museums and exhibitions; and third, the misconception that Italian museums have fallen behind because they are run by scholars and that if they were replaced by managers all problems would be solved.

In reality, even fully functioning museums do not create profit, almost no exhibitions do, and not a single art museum in Britain or America is run by a manager. The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art specializes in tapestries; the director of the Tate is an expert in contemporary art; even the J. Paul Getty Trust, a huge cultural institution that receives a $4.2 billion grant, has appointed an art historian as its third president and chief executive after two who were directors.

These directors hold the power, while lower-ranking management figures help them. Commissions do not meddle in executive matters; rather, they ensure the security of collections, authorize increased expenditures, raise funds, give advice, and usually support the director.

Three recent Italian cases

The direction of the Egyptian Museum in Turin
In 2005, Anglo-American Egyptologist Eleni Vassilika was appointed director of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, when it became a foundation-run museum from a state-run one, the first of its kind in Italy. Her very large committee, representing the local government and the banking foundation that partly funded the museum, debated the question of whether to have a director-scholar or not, arriving at the compromise of appointing Vassilika with a two-year contract followed by a couple of annual contracts, an extremely short time for any director to make any radical change effective. They harmed her even more by reappointing her for only a month or two before the end of each contract. The Foundation’s president, Alain Elkann, a member of the influential Agnelli family, intervened in the administration almost daily. Eleni Vassilika was also subject to annoying restrictions, such as having to ask permission whenever she needed to transfer an artwork from disgruntled state officials; she often had to wait weeks for a response. In spite of this, from a museum with poor didactic apparatus, poor care of its collections, and fewer than three hundred thousand visitors a year, Eleni Vassilika transformed it into a museum equal to an international curator and capable of attracting 540,000 visitors a year.

Despite this, after a change in the chairmanship of the board, she was told in 2013 that she had to compete openly for the job. She was actually replaced by Christian Greco, an Italian Egyptologist from Leiden University. Vassilika is director-curator of the National Trust, which is effectively the director of Britain’s largest diffuse museum.

The chairmanship of Venice’s civic museums
In 2010, outgoing Mayor of Venice Massimo Cacciari appointed David Landau as commission chair of its important civic museums. Landau, who lives in Venice, was born in Israel but educated in Italy. Co-author of the seminal essay on Italian Renaissance prints, a highly accomplished entrepreneur, former trustee of the National Gallery in London and chairman of its subsidiary company, he was unmistakably well qualified for the position. Three months later, the next mayor Giorgio Orsoni (who resigned last month after being arrested for accepting illicit funds) gave him the boot by sending local police to fire him. Landau’s fault: looking too closely at decades of weak administration and trying to put an end to renting out the galleries to anyone who could pay the fee. Despite this slap in the face, Landau and his wife continued to coordinate The Glass Rooms, the only space dedicated to exhibitions on 20th-century and contemporary glass art, funded entirely by themselves.

The management of Turin’s Castello di Rivoli, a museum of contemporary art.
In this case, local politics succeeded in mocking an international consultation procedure, saving the time of people interviewed for the job, and turning upside down the direction of a museum that had gained international renown, reducing it to local importance. The retirement of Ida Gianelli, a very competent director of this museum, ended a productive collaboration with Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, her deputy, who was appointed curator of Documenta 2012. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev stayed on in 2009 to manage the search for a new director, asking numerous personalities, such as Nicholas Serota of the Tate and Udo Kittelmann, director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, to put themselves forward as candidates. Many, both Italian and foreign, were interviewed and Jens Hoffmann, then director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, was chosen.

But Gianni Oliva, councilor for culture of the Piedmont Regional Council, who gets 4 million euros a year for the Rivoli Castle, insisted that his protégé, the director of the Turin Artissima fair, Andrea Bellini, who had not been nominated by the experts, be given the job. The board announced dual leadership, but Hoffmann withdrew, saying that the conditions of the job had changed from what they had previously said. Beatrice Merz, head of the local Merz Foundation, took Hoffmann’s place, although her contract as director ended at the end of 2012; Andrea Bellini left in June 2012. An attempt in 2013 to find a new director failed due to a lack of international candidates. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, one of the world’s most distinguished curators, said, The Castello di Rivoli board never suggested that I become a board member or stay in touch with the museum in any way. If they had, I probably would have considered running for director.

Correction: the original article incorrectly reported that Andrea Bellini, former co-director of the Rivoli Castle, would be proposed as a candidate by no experts. The news is not true, and The Art Newspaper apologizes for the error.

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.