Will the German national still have a job in the Italy-first era of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, when the conservative government has expressed a preference for more Italian museum directors?
Like other directors, she is seeking clarity from the Culture Ministry.
French nationals have always run the Louvre, while Spaniards reigned at Madrid’s Reina Sofia. Not so in Italy — where foreigners run many of the country’s most revered opera houses and museums.
That’s a fact that Italy’s right-wing government is now moving to change.
A vanguard of foreign talent broke centuries-old barriers nearly a decade ago, landing the top jobs not only at the Uffizi Gallery and Academy museum in Florence but at Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera and the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. They ushered in their own renaissance, bringing outside innovation to institutions that in some cases had been inefficiently run by civil servants.
But contracts for a host of key jobs are expiring this year. To fill them, Meloni’s government has adopted a selection process that critics say injects nationalism into decisions that should be ruled by merit alone. The fate of foreign museum chiefs is one part of an unfolding debate over government and culture in a country where the two notoriously mixed during the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini, when art, film and architecture became ideological tools.
Opponents say giving weight to nationality risks a return to the cronyism and politicking that hobbled Italian museums in the past, and would come at a time when leading institutions including London’s British Museum and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art have sought out the best and brightest regardless of their countries of birth. Even the Louvre has updated rules once seen as essentially barring all but a French chief.
Others see a more troubling move to put a conservative stamp on culture. They note that the general manager of RAI, the national broadcaster, was recently forced out after being blamed for, among other things, allowing a nationally televised same-sex kiss. Proposed changes to RAI’s service contract, submitted to a parliamentary committee last month, state that the broadcaster must now promote the “richness of giving birth and parenthood.” It also strikes language calling for content to respect gender diversity and sexual orientation.
At the same time, the government has pressed for new museum exhibitions on some of the cultural touchstones of the Italian right, including the Italian Futurists closely linked to the Mussolini era.
“We are … smack dab in the middle of a neofascist revival,” said the left-leaning art historian Tomaso Montanari, a member of the Uffizi’s Gallery’s steering committee.
Meloni has categorically rejected the neofascist label as silly sniping from liberals. Her government says it is simply moving to give conservatives an equal voice in a cultural world dominated by the left.
Since coming to power in October, her government has sought to restrict the parental rights of same-sex couples, but she has not followed the anti-democratic path trodden by other hard-right leaders in the European Union, including Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano likens the Meloni government to Reagan Republicans, rather than the Trump-era stirrers of the U.S. culture wars. He told The Washington Post he expected some qualified foreigners to still run Italy’s cultural institutions in the next wave of hiring.
But he also conceded that he would seek to strike a new “balance” after what he suggested were overzealous attempts to court non-Italians.
“In your opinion, would the French ever allow an American, or an Italian, to direct the Louvre?” he asked. “It would be very difficult.”
To some degree, political interference from all parts of the political spectrum in culture is par for the Italian course. But critics say the Meloni government is going beyond past efforts.
At RAI, former chief executive Carlo Fuortes resigned in May, citing “a political clash” with the government and demands to change RAI’s “editorial line” and “programming.” Members of the ruling coalition had pushed for his ouster, blaming him for left-wing commentary at February’s hugely popular Sanremo Music Festival — in addition to that kiss.
Government critics have either preemptively quit or were forced out. One of them — writer and journalist Roberto Saviano — has been locked in defamation suits with Meloni and two of her ministers. He saw his upcoming series removed from programming last month, a decision that came days after he publicly called Meloni’s deputy, the far-right Matteo Salvini, a “minister of the underworld.” RAI’s new management did not respond to a request for comment but has denied any bias.
“In the past, space was never denied to any kind of voice,” said Matteo Orfini, a lawmaker from the opposition Democratic Party. “It was never imagined that you could purge or shut down a greatly successful show just because it wasn’t liked by those who were governing.”
The leadership at Rome’s Experimental Cinematography Center resigned this month after Meloni allies in Parliament sought their ouster. Founded in 1935 by Mussolini, the center has been an important creative hub, with notable former students including director Michelangelo Antonioni and Dino De Laurentiis. Italian cinema luminaries and current students have signed a petition opposing the move against management and a restructuring of the school’s advisory board that critics fear could give the current government more influence over student projects.
Sangiuliano said students and teachers will be “fully free to express themselves.”
But leading film world figures remain concerned.
“This is a grave matter,” said noted Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Özpetek, who frequently explores LBGTQ+ topics. “Art must stay autonomous and independent. We must keep our eyes open.”
The top jobs at leading Italian museums were opened to foreigners in 2015 by the center-left government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Following an international search, a committee including the former head of Britain’s National Gallery provided a shortlist of candidates to the ministry. Non-Italians were then picked to head seven of Italy’s top 20 museums and archaeological sites.
Now Sangiuliano will be handed a list drawn up by an all-Italian ministry-appointed committee, some of whom do not hail from the art world. Jobs will be limited to E.U. nationals, and Italian language proficiency will be required. Two leading associations of Italian art historians have protested the new approach, calling it a politicization of culture.
“I am afraid that this government [will] try to avoid foreigners, and that will be a big mistake,” said Fausto Calderai, president of the Friends of the Gallery of the Academy of Florence and a former expert at Sotheby’s. “I couldn’t care less if someone is from Naples or Stuttgart.”
Sangiuliano counters that his government is doing nothing unusual. The language of a recent tender for the new head of Spain’s Reina Sofia, for instance, limited applicants to Spanish and E.U. nationals or those with a legal right to work in Spain. (As in the past, the job ultimately went to a Spaniard.)
Vittorio Sgarbi, Meloni’s undersecretary of culture, says certain jobs should go to Italians, adding that qualified Italian candidates had been unfairly penalized in the past.
“The Uffizi and La Scala are two institutions that are representative of Italian culture, like the Louvre and Paris Opera,” he said. “Until France starts picking foreign directors, we’ll be following that approach in Italy.”
But others say it’s precisely the new foreign blood that has helped reinvigorate some leading Italian museums.
In 2015, Eike Schmidt, a German former curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, became the first non-Italian director of Florence’s storied Uffizi Gallery, home to such major works as Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” By the time his second four-year term expires this year, he will have doubled exhibition space, boosted attendance and lifted revenue by 150 percent.
He sympathizes with ministry concerns over so many non-Italians running the country’s cultural institutions. Under current rules, two-term directors cannot reapply for the same jobs. Sangiuliano called Schmidt, who is married to an Italian, a “great friend” and said he would like to see him run “another great Italian museum.”
At Florence’s Academy museum, built in the 19th century to house Michelangelo’s “David,” Hollberg also arrived to myriad problems. Priceless busts were left in the hallways of back offices, including a reclining female nude by Lorenzo Bartolini in her own office suite. (She moved them all to renovated exhibition space.) The water often didn’t work. It was so stiflingly hot in the summer that one of the gallery’s grandest rooms could be opened only in the mornings.
Hollberg installed air conditioning and improved lighting, colors and signs. That brought more viewers to works by masters such as Il Perugino and Botticelli — pieces that had previously been bypassed by sweaty crowds gravitating toward “David.” Museum attendance since 2015 has jumped 22 percent.
She has six more months on her contract than many other directors because the Academy Gallery was briefly absorbed by the Uffizi in 2019. Now, it’s being merged again — this time with Florence’s Bargello National Museum.
She hopes to lead the new, larger institution. Sangiuliano said it will be up to the commission to decide if she is on the list of contenders.
“I think you always have to select the best ones,” she said. “It’s absolutely not interesting where they come from.”
Pitrelli reported from Rome.