The Ministry of Culture ’s recent announcement regarding 2,700 new hires, with 550 to be added to the workforce by the end of the year, has generated not a few perplexities among those in the field. While the Ministry has released the overall numbers and has already indicated the profiles that will be put up for competition in the fall, the destination of the 251 officials whose recruitment was authorized by the Prime Minister’s Decree of August 7, 2025 and who, according to regulations, must be recruited by December 31, still remains an unknown. Asking for clarity is CISDA, Comitato Idonei Storici dell’Arte, which in an open letter to the Ministry denounces a situation that risks excluding precisely that category that represents the only still valid ranking within the administration, related to the Ministry’s last competition, the MiC 518 competition, due to expire in May 2026.
The committee, which brings together the 251 successful candidates still awaiting recruitment, points out that in recent months the answers received from the Ministry’s managers have been unequivocal: the organic plants would be saturated. However, as CISDA points out, these allocations date back to November 2022, the period before the competition was published. In the meantime, there have been retirements, mobility, slippage from other rankings, and, above all, a profound reform introduced by DPCM 57/2024, which changed the structure of the dicastery by establishing four new departments, two new directorates general, and twenty-three autonomous second-tier museums, as well as reforming the Export Offices.
To better understand the current state of personnel, CISDA conducted a reconnaissance of the art historian officers in service, highlighting a “bleak panorama:” “the numbers,” the open letter reads, "are pitiless and one immediately grasps how much the professional figure of the art historian is now increasingly marginal in MiC policy. In the general directorates, which are the core of administrative activity, 35 officials were expected in 2022, but today, according to CISDA’s findings, only 15 are active, with a gap of 20 units. Even more critical appears to be the situation of the Superintendencies of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape (Sabap), which were supposed to have 162 officials and now record 137, with an unbalanced geographical distribution and a particularly marked deficit in the South. “From a quick analysis,” the missive reads, “we observe how the South registers a very serious shortage of staff. In Calabria we have 4 Art Historian Officials, distributed over three territorial Sabaps; Puglia has 5 to cover its four offices, with an Export Office in charge, all colleagues hired through the competition in question to make up for a very serious shortage of staff, such that it does not even allow for an adequate handover between the old and new hires. At the Center, the situation does not improve, also in view of the critical issues related to the recent earthquakes: Abruzzo, which saw 10 Art Historians assigned from the 2022 organic plans, has only 5 on staff; in Marche, despite the derisory forecast of 4, only 2 are on duty, both hired with this competition, working on two Sabap, with the added load of an Export Office in the midst of reform. In Molise, only 2 are on duty throughout the region, including the Regional Museums Directorate, which has none; 3 in Umbria with 92 municipalities and an Export Office also under reform. In contrast, Sardinia, one of the largest regions, has 4 officials on staff, for two territorial Sabap, of which only 1 covers the entire north center of the island, with the presence of an Export Office in Sassari. In the North, 11 Art Historians are missing from the 2022 staffing plan forecast. A lack that particularly affects Piedmont, where of the 11 Art Historian Officers planned, only 7 are in service to cover four Sabap.”
The problem concerns not only quantity, but also the quality of the functions that art historians must guarantee. In fact, they are central figures for protection procedures, from verification and declaration of cultural interest to cataloguing, from the management of constraints to authorizations for interventions on constrained property, to the control of the international circulation of works through export offices. The latter sector, in particular, appears to be in difficulty today due to staff shortages and increased workload, despite the fact that the recent reduction of VAT on sales of works of art was intended to boost the market. Export offices, CISDA recalls, “carry out many activities, the main ones being: export authorization, technical and scientific evaluation, verification of exhibition projects, collaboration with other bodies -, coordinating with customs, Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, territorial superintendencies and other institutions. There are currently fifteen Export Offices in Italy: Ancona, Bari, Bologna, Cagliari, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Perugia, Rome, Sassari, Venice, Verona, Turin, and Trieste; the norm establishes that the commission must be made up of scientific and technical Officials, thus Art Historian Officials and in specific cases Archaeologists, while the direction of the commission is the prerogative of the Art Historian. The reform being implemented has also established that the Export Offices of Trieste, Perugia, Ancona, Bari and Sassari, hitherto in charge of practices pertaining to contemporary art AAC, D50 and therefore without a Commission, will soon have to deal with all the procedures pertaining to this Office, finding themselves de facto without staff. In this regard, we point out the current unsuitability of the staff in charge of some of these Offices, confirming once again the lack of suitable personnel - Art Historian Officers.”
Also of concern to CISDA is the condition of state museums. The 2024 reform increased the number of autonomous archaeological institutes and parks to as many as 67, requiring new technical and scientific staff. Yet the supply of art historians remains insufficient. In major executive museums, the presence of officials rarely exceeds five or six. In the face of this scarcity, the considered positive example of the Uffizi Galleries, with 10 art historians, demonstrates a virtuous standard but still far from international models, with Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie cited as a benchmark example with 16 units among curators, conservators and researchers. In Italian museums the situation is quite different: at Capodimonte there are the organic 5 art historian officials, at the Galleria Borghese 5, at GNAM in Rome, 5 of which 1 has been seconded for many years to another institution, at the Pinacoteca di Brera 5, at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice 6, at ViVe 2. “In the count,” the CISDA specifies, “there are both units that entered with the placement in question, but there are also units now on the threshold of retirement age, which in some cases postpone the proper time of rest so as not to further deplete the staff of the museum institution in which they are in charge.”
According to the committee, staff shortages jeopardize the efficiency of the administration and heritage protection itself, exacerbating delays in proceedings and fueling public distrust. Hence the request to the Ministry to make known as soon as possible the professional skills to which the new hires authorized by the August DPCM will be allocated and to proceed with the scrolling of the still active ranking list. “The ranking list of 251 eligible Art Historians (MiC competition 518) is the most immediate response to what has been dramatically highlighted by the aforementioned analysis,” CISDA argues. “We want to reiterate here, strongly and with dignity, our training and expertise, recalling, moreover, how many of us already work as temps within the MiC. A paradoxical short-circuit well evidenced by the many different contracts in place between us and the Ministry.”
Finally, the CISDA believes it is necessary “to revise the organic plan for the figure of the Art Historian with the aim of making the action of the Public Administration more competitive and performing, bringing to completion the Administrative Proceedings within the timeframe provided by the law, but also and above all with the aim of protecting, enhancing and making the Italian Cultural Heritage enjoy, to its full potential.”
“The time has come,” the committee concludes, “to change course and return the discipline of Art History to the center of this Ministry’s policies. An investment that is certain, that speaks of the future, and that would involve professionals with a high level of training able to return our country to being a point of reference for research in the field of Cultural Heritage, promoting its development and knowledge.”
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| Ministry of Culture, new hires but the mystery of officials remains |
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