Italy to take back control of its museums despite success of foreign talent

Populist government plans to reform its institutions by reversing policy of finding international directors

IT WAS hailed as a historic shake-up, a chance to make up for “lost decades” in the management of Italy’s superbly endowed, but often poorly run, museums and galleries.

Four years ago, the Italian government opened up the running of 20 of its most high-profile cultural institutions to foreign candidates.

But the reforms are now being rolled back under Italy’s populist coalition.

Many people now believe museums should be managed by Italians, according to Peter Aufreiter, the Austrian director of the National Gallery of the Marche region in Urbino.

He is one of seven foreign directors appointed by the previous government in an international talent hunt. “With these appointments, Italy’s museums will make up for lost decades,” said Dario Franceschini, then culture minister, who had pushed the initiative.

And indeed they did. Visitor numbers shot up and mothballed rooms, crammed with a cornucopia of Western art that had not been seen for years, were opened up to the public.

But the reforms are now being swept away by Alberto Bonisoli, the culture minister, who has instituted a package of changes which, he says, will reduce expenditure and streamline bureaucracy. Three foreign directors have said they will leave Italy when their contracts expire in October.

“With these reforms, I have the impression that I’m no longer useful or valued,” Mr Aufreiter told The Sunday Telegraph.

“A lot of people here in Italy think that museums should be managed by Italians.” He said he found that attitude “ridiculous”.

His tenure has been a success, with visitor numbers up by 30 per cent, but he will leave Italy in the autumn, bound for a new job in Vienna.

James Bradburne, the British director of the Brera Pinacoteca gallery in Milan, has been credited with increasing visitor numbers and making the institution more accessible. But he is now in a state of limbo.

“I have not yet been invited to stay for a second term, therefore any decision on my part would be premature,” Dr Bradburne told The Telegraph.

One of the key reforms that was implemented under the centre-Left government four years ago was the principle that museum directors should have control of their own budgets.

That is now being eroded, with control being transferred back to Rome under the reforms announced by Mr Bonisoli.

German Eike Schmidt at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, is also leaving and will take up a new position at the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna.