Why Italy's culture minister is furious with Florence's Uffizi museum
Italy's new culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano railed at Florence’s Uffizi museum after it remained closed over this week's public holiday.
A public spat has erupted between Italy's new culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, and the director of the Uffizi museum after the famed galleries remained closed on Monday, October 31st, disappointing thousands of tourists.
The Uffizi shut its sculpture and painting galleries on Monday despite the presence of many tourists in the city for the long weekend (or ‘ponte’) ending on All Saints’ Day, a national bank holiday.
Although the Uffizi is normally closed on Mondays, some Italian museums hold special openings on days when many tourists are expected in town, including over the early November holidays.
The museum was open again on Tuesday, but Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, who took up his post last month under the new government, said the closure was a "very serious" matter and demanded to know why the museum was not kept open.
"It does not escape your intelligence that a closure of this kind, in addition to constituting a loss of income, represents damage to the image of the Uffizi Galleries and the entire national museum system," Sangiuliano wrote on Wednesday.
The Uffizi's German director, Eike Schmidt, shot back, thanking the minister for "speaking with great candour" before explaining the museum's constraints, from work contracts to outside contractors, and saying requests to the culture ministry for more staff being denied "for years".
READ ALSO: Nine things to do in Italy this autumn
In the case of the Uffizi and other state museums, staff hiring is the responsibility of the ministry, wrote Schmidt, who has headed the institution since 2015.
Schmidt also added that he was "just as shocked" as Sangiuliano, but, he said, the government must intervene.
"Unfortunately, the problem of understaffing is endemic throughout virtually the entire national museum, library and archival landscape: it is now unsolvable without a sharp and decisive intervention from the centre, reversing the established practice of recent years," Schmidt wrote.
The Uffizi display some of the greatest masterpieces of Italian art, including works from Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio and Titian.
Some 1.7 million people visited the Uffizi in 2021, according to the museum – more than Rome's Colosseum, the ruins of Pompeii and the Vatican Museums.
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A public spat has erupted between Italy's new culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, and the director of the Uffizi museum after the famed galleries remained closed on Monday, October 31st, disappointing thousands of tourists.
The Uffizi shut its sculpture and painting galleries on Monday despite the presence of many tourists in the city for the long weekend (or ‘ponte’) ending on All Saints’ Day, a national bank holiday.
Although the Uffizi is normally closed on Mondays, some Italian museums hold special openings on days when many tourists are expected in town, including over the early November holidays.
The museum was open again on Tuesday, but Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, who took up his post last month under the new government, said the closure was a "very serious" matter and demanded to know why the museum was not kept open.
"It does not escape your intelligence that a closure of this kind, in addition to constituting a loss of income, represents damage to the image of the Uffizi Galleries and the entire national museum system," Sangiuliano wrote on Wednesday.
The Uffizi's German director, Eike Schmidt, shot back, thanking the minister for "speaking with great candour" before explaining the museum's constraints, from work contracts to outside contractors, and saying requests to the culture ministry for more staff being denied "for years".
READ ALSO: Nine things to do in Italy this autumn
In the case of the Uffizi and other state museums, staff hiring is the responsibility of the ministry, wrote Schmidt, who has headed the institution since 2015.
Schmidt also added that he was "just as shocked" as Sangiuliano, but, he said, the government must intervene.
"Unfortunately, the problem of understaffing is endemic throughout virtually the entire national museum, library and archival landscape: it is now unsolvable without a sharp and decisive intervention from the centre, reversing the established practice of recent years," Schmidt wrote.
The Uffizi display some of the greatest masterpieces of Italian art, including works from Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio and Titian.
Some 1.7 million people visited the Uffizi in 2021, according to the museum – more than Rome's Colosseum, the ruins of Pompeii and the Vatican Museums.
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