Francesco Erbani publishes The State of the Art. Report among the vices, virtues and public management of cultural property (see ill.). He criticizes the commodification of Italian heritage which suffers from a chronically understaffed administration headed by personalities without sufficient political weight to make its needs heard.
What are the main problems facing Italian cultural heritage – museums, libraries, archives, archaeological sites, etc.?
The most important and urgent are the increasingly reduced financial resources and the lack of personnel. Problems that continue to grow. Some budgets in recent years have attempted to reverse the trend, but with the Meloni government we have gone backwards, as shown by the budget cuts that are planned for next year. Staff deficits reach tragic levels with sometimes up to half of the positions being vacant, at all levels: within the ministry, in the superintendences, even in the autonomous museums which, with the 2014 reform , were supposed to represent the excellence of our heritage. Not to mention libraries and archives, the most penalized sectors, forced to reduce opening hours or close. In 2020, Italy allocated 4.9 billion euros to culture. This is less than Spain’s more than 5 billion euros and a far cry from the 15.3 billion euros spent on this sector in Germany and the 16.6 billion euros in France. While the Member States of the European Union spend on average 1% of their budget on culture, Italy, which boasts of being the richest country in terms of heritage, barely reaches 0.7%. This is roughly the level of Cyprus, Portugal and Greece.
Yet the current government had set itself the priority of launching a “cultural revolution”?
The abuse of rhetorical expressions inherent to cultural heritage dates back to the 1980s when heritage began to be compared to “Italy’s oil”. At this time, we even began to talk about cultural “goods” with an economic connotation and we now speak of the Ministry of Culture as “the most important economic ministry in the country”. This phenomenon has regained new vigor, but with a new dimension because the Meloni government wanted to entrust cultural policies and heritage with an identity role, rewriting the national historical narrative. All this against a backdrop of spasmodic occupation of positions of responsibility, in a spirit of revenge since the extreme right has been in opposition since the post-war period. This clashes with the principles of reality with an absence of a ruling class up to the challenges and incapable of tackling the resolution of the problems afflicting cultural heritage. The only answer is the use of precarious workers with extremely low wages to make up for staffing shortages. This is a slap in the face to the skills and passion of many young archaeologists, art historians and architects, as well as to heritage protection.
Francesco Erbani, Lo stato dell’arte, reportage tra vizi, virtù e gestione politica dei beni culturali2024.
© Manni Editori
What is the situation of the staff in charge of Italian heritage?
According to data for 2020, there is a shortage of 32% of security and reception staff while more than 73% of those on duty are over 55 years old. Among civil servants, the gaps within the various administrations reach 33% and more than three quarters of those who work there are over 55 years old. The situation is also serious with regard to technical-scientific personnel: 36% of the workforce is missing with 60% of art historians, archaeologists or architects aged over 55. Even within the General Directorate of Museums, the staff deficit is close to 60%, reaching 70% among those in charge of expenditure procedures. But beyond the base of the pyramid, these voids also extend to the top, where the use of temporary work has become common for museum managers who sometimes have to manage several establishments.
What about the Ministry of Culture?
It is a recent ministry which has just celebrated fifty years of its creation. For years it was entrusted to insignificant personalities, a symptom of the lack of interest shown in these questions by the political class. Even if the situation has evolved since the turn of the 2000s, the fact remains that the holder of this portfolio should have much greater political weight and the ability to assert their needs. From 1998 to the first months of 2024, the Ministry of Culture underwent fifteen reforms. On average, one every year and six months. They only served to put a little more stress on an understaffed structure which should include 19,073 employees, but in which only 10,753 people work. Lorenzo Casini, former chief of staff of Dario Franceschini, admitted in 2016 that no reform (and he was the architect of that of 2014) could succeed if the problem of lack of personnel and the advanced age of civil servants is not resolved. Competitions for new hires are extremely rare, ultimately only partially covering real needs. The skills required in these competitions are very generic, not corresponding to the needs of the different services, or they are hyper-specialized. It’s a machine that runs on empty. The entire system is on the verge of collapse. How many Superintendence agents are today able to carry out inspections on the territory entrusted to them in the absence of colleagues? But no minister has ever really banged his fist on the table to get what was needed. It is as if a Minister of the Economy had to function without worrying about an uncontrollable public debt.
What do you think about this friction between valorization and preservation when it comes to talking about cultural heritage?
It is a false debate in Italy which barely masks a commodification of culture which has continued to increase in recent decades. The obsessive attention paid to attendance figures at museums and archaeological sites echoes the desire to promote heritage, but in a primarily economic sense. What value does it represent from a financial point of view and how can you get the most out of it? This is the first question asked by the State, the Regions and public organizations which believe that they can relax their financial efforts to preserve the heritage which can in itself generate significant profits. How ? By selling more and more entry tickets, by selling itself like any commodity, by organizing exhibitions designed as commercial rather than scientific events or by attracting private investors. My point is not to demonize private investments; and management by the public sometimes proves disastrous. It is essential that places of culture dialogue with the territories where they are located, that they open the doors to various initiatives, but it is worrying when the relationship is structured in a purely commercial sense, by renting secluded spaces to collective use for private parties or by granting valuable works to serve as decor for a fashion show. This is one of the effects of a villainous pact: the State gives you little money and therefore you are forced to obtain it as best you can.
What consequences does mass tourism in Italy have for its cultural assets?
It is obvious that tourists are attracted to Italy by its incomparable cultural heritage. The growth of visitors to museums and archaeological sites has been exponential at least since 2014, exerting less and less sustainable pressure on an extremely fragile heritage. However, if, beyond the figures establishing attendance records each year, we read those of the National Institute of Statistics (Istat), we discover that less than three out of ten Italians enter a museum or archaeological site each year . The relationships have been reversed and tourism, for many public administrators, is the raison d’être of cultural heritage. A striking example: the mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, kept the city’s museums closed for a few more months after the end of the confinement linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, while elsewhere they reopened. A choice motivated because the tourists had not returned. Now that we are drowning in mass tourism, we realize to what extent this phenomenon, left uncontrolled, undermines the quality and very essence of the historic centers of our cities, a characteristic expression of Italian heritage.
