CISDA, Comitato Idonei Storici dell’Arte, continues to question the deep reasons for the progressive decline of the figure of the art historian in Italy. The starting point was a recent speech by Federico Giannini dedicated to work in culture, the content of which offered the Committee a new opportunity to reflect on the condition of a sector considered crucial for Italy but increasingly marked by structural fragilities, controversial political choices and widespread professional malaise. CISDA had been working for some time on a document dedicated to the relationship with universities, but the publication on November 10 of the Ministry of Culture’s new Professional Order, which was then withdrawn just two days later, lent urgency to the drafting of the text. The ensuing debate, in fact, further highlighted a crisis that is now evident.
According to the data reported by the Committee, today the Ministry of Culture already has available, and thus present in the budget, more than 600 positions for the Area Officials Band III, while the sectoral vacancy is 2,019. The overall shortage of personnel in the department, on the other hand, reaches 6,721, compared to a staff complement set at 19,184. Numbers that, when read together with the competition situation, contribute to an alarming picture. Parliamentary questions submitted in recent months by the Honorable Valentina Grippo of Action and the Honorable Irene Manzi and Andrea Casu of the Democratic Party have pointed out that the new competitions announced in August but not yet published will take at least two years to complete. The Ministry currently has only one active ranking list, that of MiC 518 Art Historians, and cannot rely on lists from other administrations. Recruitments made in recent months in the Officer Area barely cover the turnover resulting from retirements, while central and peripheral offices continue to suffer from a structural shortage of cultural professionals. This leads, in CISDA’s view, to renewed questions about the reasons preventing the full absorption of the rank-and-file of art historians and historians.
Further complicating the situation is Circular No. 133, circulated on Nov. 10 by the Directorate General for Human Resources and Organization and later cancelled on the 12th. In the document, on the Professional Order of Non-Managerial Personnel, a master’s degree was indicated as the new single requirement for access to competitions for Officials, effectively eliminating the value of advanced specialist training. For CISDA, this choice, although later retracted, reveals a deeper knot, which it defines as a bitter conviction: historians and art historians are at the center of a long-standing political and cultural problem that has progressively impoverished their role, recognition and professional dignity.
In light of these critical issues, CISDA calls on the world of universities, CUNSTA - the National University Council for Art History - and professional associations “to carry out,” reads the note issued from the communiqué, “a serious reflection on the role and employment condition of graduates and post-graduates in the field of Cultural Heritage. A request, this one, coming ’from below’ to give a voice to experts who daily experience on their skin the effects of a now incipient devaluation.” This contradiction appears aggravated by administrative policies and choices that, over the years, would have progressively reduced the weight of cultural professionals. The data reported by the Committee are telling: Italy ranks 21st in Europe in the number of cultural workers, accounting for 3.5 percent of total employment, a percentage lower than the EU average of 3.8 percent. Nearly 70 percent of art historians, archaeologists, archivists and librarians earn between four and eight euros net per hour, while 32 percent work through VAT or occasional benefits. Precariousness, therefore, remains the norm, confirming a system that struggles to ensure stability and recognition.
The Committee recalls that “advanced training for Officials was established in 1901, when Adolfo Venturi, Inspector General of Antiquities and Fine Arts, founded at the Sapienza University of Rome the School of Advanced Studies in Medieval and Modern Art History, at the same time as the first chair of Art History in Italy. The vision was ambitious: to train professional men and women of the public cultural heritage, people animated by civic sense and equipped with a solid background. Gaining access to the Superintendencies (formally established in 1907), joining dedicated ministerial bodies, carrying out territorial surveillance tasks and caring for monuments were considered the natural outcomes and privileged outlets of training, preferable even to university teaching. All this has risked being a distant memory. The Schools of Specialization in Historical and Artistic Heritage (SSBSA), the direct heirs of an excellent tradition, are in constant danger - and what has happened proves it - of being diminished to the point of becoming insignificant appendages, superfluous remnants lacking in attractiveness and validity.”
For CISDA, it is therefore necessary to mend the relationship between the Ministry of Culture and the universities, so as to re-establish a common path that will allow the pursuit of excellence that both institutions must guarantee, in line with Article 9 of the Constitution. To do so, the Committee calls for “a clear stance on the part of the Universities in order to bring back to the center of the system of protection and conservation an authentic knowledge of our cultural wealth, so as to counteract the commodifying and often unnecessarily spectacularizing drifts to which it is many times subjected. To redefine our present and, through the study and preservation of the past, design our future.”
“We also think,” CISDA adds, “that there is an urgent need to resume the dialogue between universities and the Ministry of Culture, including with reference to the aforementioned Professional Order Book for MiC personnel, in order to raise the standards of both institutions. In the current Mansionary, for example, there are, in the area of Officials, new figures such as the Registrar and the Numismatist, for which only a master’s degree is required despite the fact that these are profiles that require a very high sectorial specialization. In our opinion, a third-level degree would be necessary. It is also imperative to initiate a reflection on High Professionalism. Finally, it is important to emphasize that among the goals of CISDA, in addition to the complete absorption of the MiC 518 ranking, is to lay the foundations for a future professional association to define and promote in a stable and effective way the professional interests of Historians and Historians of the ’art, through the establishment of the professional category of Art Historians, on the model of that of Architects and Restorers, as well as the creation of an ATECO code that would unambiguously identify their tasks and functions.”
In conclusion, the CISDA asks the Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli for firm answers on the extension of the ranking list for Art Historians, due to expire in May 2026, and on the expansion of the staffing plans, which today provide for only 455 posts dedicated to the category in all Ministry offices. According to the data cited by the Committee, despite the most recent hires, the shortages remain substantial and the failure to place the remaining 211 eligible staff on the roster does not appear justified. Therefore, CISDA believes it is necessary to proceed with the full absorption of the ranking list, taking advantage of the resources provided in the August 7, 2025 DPCM, in order to meet a demand for expertise that they consider can no longer be postponed.
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| Alarm over the future of art historians: CISDA urges institutions to take action |
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