The real passions of Italians: Ikea and McDonald's. For museum queues, will we have to wait for foreign tourists?

The first two days of the end of the lockdown passed very quietly for the Italian museums that reopened between yesterday and today. Institutions that have welcomed the public again (including some decidedly important names: the Galleria Borghese in Rome, the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, the Capitolini Museums, the Poldi Pezzoli in Milan, the GAM in Milan, the Centro Camera in Turin, the Madre in Naples, the MAMbo in Bologna, and many others) are talking about few visitors and are beginning to post, on their social profiles, photographs of empty halls, staff wearing masks, security devices such as thermoscanners and the like.

No crowd at the entrance, and even in the Messaggero it is reported that the first visitor of the day at the GNAM in Rome was a Roman gentleman, who arrived on purpose by bicycle from the Appio Latino, and dressed for the solemn occasion in a suit and tie: an outfit that one struggles to catch a glimpse of at press conferences, let alone on normal visiting days, when in so many museums it is almost a mirage to spot a leather shirt or shoe. For the rest, there are reports of students (especially of... technical subjects: art history and the like), teachers, retirees, a few foreigners living in Italy, and a few enthusiasts who wanted to take advantage of a very quiet early week at the end of confinement to visit their favorite museum in peace.

In short, Italians did not show all that much desire to populate their museums. On the contrary, already last May 4, i.e., at the beginning of the so-called “phase 2,” we had discovered that we were voracious devourers of hamburgers and fries, given the long lines that were created in front of the McDonald’s that allowed take-out service: probably, the culinary experiments that turned Italians into a people of bakers and wiped out the country’s yeast supply proved unsuccessful and forced our compatriots into a melancholy surrender to the tune of BigMacs and medium-size Coca-Cola (with the usual half-pound of ice in it as usual).

Queues at Ikea in Brescia and McDonald’s in Padua.

Instead, in these first two days of regained freedom, the queues were seen (all over Italy, as witnessed by the photographs of social users) in front of a specific commercial establishment: the Ikea. Very long queues with visitors all spaced out and wearing masks at the Ikea of Anagnina in Rome, at the one in Collegno, in Brescia and everywhere up and down the country, from Brianza to Catania. What irrepressible impulse will have driven our compatriots to use the first precious hours of freedom to swoop like hawks to the celebrated low-cost furniture warehouses? Perhaps, a primary necessity: because of the forced twentyfour/seven cohabitation, many couples, having finished hurling plates at each other and having broken them all, will have taken to throwing chairs at each other, and will therefore have to renew their furniture stock with a practical Svenbertil chair or a comfortable Grönlid armchair. Or because many husbands and boyfriends must have misbehaved and therefore had to serve a tremendous punishment inflicted by female companions, made all the more unbearable by the torture of having to stand in line with the idea of entering an Ikea. Or simply because Italians’ passions include that, unsuspected until before the pandemic, for cheap Swedish furniture.

So, as was widely predictable, malls beat museums with a double 6-0. However, we want to provide support for the museums: evidently their virtual tours and social videos have been so convincing that they have satisfied the craving for art of many, who conversely have been unable to resist the alluring and persuasive lure of light plywood and little pencils to ambush. Many, after all, may have thought that they did not need to see a Caravaggio painting or a Bernini sculpture live if they have already observed it in a photo or Instagram stories, while instead a nightstand with an unlikely Scandinavian cross-country skiing Olympian’s name compulsorily requires an indispensable de visu presence during the first day of déconfinement.

Of course, museums should not be pitted against malls, and far be it from us to have that idea: if a person intends to spend an entire Saturday afternoon inside a mall, perhaps he or she is not even part of the potential museum audience. However, the fact that Ikea has been the forbidden dream of "lockdown," the first destination at the top of the priority list of so many Italians who even felt the need to get in line to enter it, perhaps helps us understand why in one year (Istat confirms) only 3 out of 10 Italians enter a museum. Perhaps, to return to seeing queues in front of our cultural places will have to wait for foreign tourists?

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