Foreign Museum Directors in Italy Breathe a Sigh of Relief Over the Reappointment of an Anti-Fascist Culture Minister

There’s been something of a reprieve for Italy’s foreign museum
directors, who recently feared that nationalist government
officials would not renew their contracts.

Now that a new coalition government has been formed, sidelining
the right-wing nationalist League, Dario Franceschini, the
center-left politician who was behind the hiring foreign experts in
the first place, is back as culture minister—which means the museum
directors might be able to keep their jobs after all. And with
Franceschini back, the directors of Italy’s state museum may not
lose the autonomy that allowed them to modernize as they saw fit,
another reform that the previous culture minister had tried to
reverse.

“Franceschini liberated Italian museums from provincialism and
believes in giving them autonomy and foreign managers. Now he is
back in office he wants to continue with his reforms—there is no
way back,” an Italian museum official told the Times of
London. “All the foreign directors will be happy.”

But many of the seven international directors appointed in 2015
have already made plans to take jobs elsewhere. Convinced that
he was no longer welcome in Italy, Peter Assmann, who is Austrian,
made plans to leave Mantua’s Palazzo Ducale at the end of his
contract to run the Austrian National Museum. Meanwhile, Peter
Aufreiter, also from Austria, will be stepping down at the National
Gallery of Marche to become director of the Technical Museum in
Vienna.

Eike Schmidt, the German director of the Uffizi in Florence, is
headed to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, while German
art expert Cecilie Hollberg was abruptly fired from the Accademia
Gallery in Florence when the museum merged with the Uffizi in
August.

The previous culture minister, Alberto Bonisoli, ruffled
feathers in January when he suggested that he preferred homegrown
talent. In August, new regulations were signed into law eliminating
museums’ independent boards of trustees and giving the government
oversight of institutional loans and spending. Although the earlier
reforms in museum leadership had increased attendance and brought
new life to many institutions, such change, it seemed, was no
longer welcome.

But the government collapsed soon after, as the Five Star
Movement’s alliance with the League— formed after neither
party won a majority in the country’s 2018 election—fell apart. The
new government is led by prime minister Giuseppe
Conte.

The change bodes well for French art historian Sylvain Bellenger
at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples and James Bradburne, a
British Canadian, at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.
And even Schmidt may reconsider his decision to leave, according to
the Times. At least one foreign director, Germany’s
Gabriel Zuchtriegel at the Paestum Archaeology Park, tells
artnet News that his contract had already been renewed prior to the
formation of the new government.

The post Foreign Museum Directors in Italy Breathe a Sigh of
Relief Over the Reappointment of an Anti-Fascist Culture
Minister appeared first on artnet News.