2,000 euros a year for an art historian: Marino Marini Foundation's call for proposals causes debate

Can an art historian be paid a gross salary of 2,000 euros a year to do research? That’s what the grassroots is asking after the publication last January 18 of a call for proposals by the Marino Marini Foundation in Pistoia. It is an exploratory survey for the selection of a professional with the aim of entrusting a professional scientific consulting assignment: all the relevant qualifications are required, from a master’s degree in art history to experience in the study of twentieth-century art history, from expertise in the study of the history of collecting to expertise in the history of twentieth-century sculpture.

The expected duration of the position is one year, extendable by another year, with a VAT-registered working relationship. The remuneration? Two thousand euros gross. The professional will have to deal with several activities: to carry out research to provide the necessary documentation for the scientific activity of the Foundation, with particular reference to theauthentication of the works taking into account the archival, photographic and bibliographical materials within the Foundation itself, and then to carry out studies with a view to providing materials for the construction of a new catalog raisonné of the artist’s work. All this is to be carried out “primarily in the spaces of the Foundation,” as stated in the announcement.

Are these activities, over the course of a year, really worth only two thousand euros gross? That’s what the base asks. “This is an autonomous collaboration,” says Valentina Colagrossi, a member of the Mi Riconosci association that raised the case, "from whose compensation, which is already derisory, taxes and social security charges will be deducted, so a year’s work by the specialist who will make the authentications possible will cost paradoxically less than the authentications themselves! It is unacceptable that an important entity such as the Marino Marini Foundation can think of paying so little for the professionals it uses and from whom it requires titles, experience and skills.

It is therefore clamored for the immediate revocation of the notice, which Mi Riconosci defines as “offensive to any professional, whether in art history or other fields, emphasizing how much this affair makes one reflect on the increasingly widespread system of participatory foundations, which are frequently presented as the solution to all the problems of the cultural sector when instead, in the face of greater means and fewer constraints, they regularly fuel poor and precarious work.”

Image: interior of the Marino Marini Museum in Pistoia.

2,000 euros a year for an art historian: Marino Marini Foundation's call for proposals causes debate

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