Book Review

Italia S.p.A. - L'Assalto al Patrimonio Culturale
Salvatore Settis
Einaudi, Torino, 2002 - Gli Struzzi 554.
ISBN 88-06-16445-7

Salvatore Settis is an authoritative and well-respected spokesperson for cultural affairs, both in Italy and abroad. He is an art historian by training, and chaired the Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art, Washington in 2001. He is one of a handful of Italians to have worked abroad in the cultural sector at a very senior level. He served as Director of the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities in Los Angeles between 1994 and 1999, and is currently the director of Italy's most prestigious higher educational institution, the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. He is also the first recipient of the newly established prize in remembrance of the famous art historian Federico Zeri. 

Italia S.p.A. was published in October 2002 and has not yet been translated into English.

Since then, it has established itself as one of the key texts in the current, heated debate around the management of Italy's museums and heritage sites. Its value is that of having widened this debate beyond a dispute between different political parties, and having brought to a wider, non-specialist audience some of the main facts and data behind the history of Italian cultural policy legislation, emphasising its positive aspects.

The areas touched upon in Italia S.p.A. are complex and in this review it has only been possible to give an indication of the main points of contention.

The election, in June 2001, of Silvio Berlusconi, who famously claimed he wanted to "do for Italy what Margaret Thatcher [had] done for the United Kingdom," and Italy's struggle to keep within the Maastricht criteria for national debt form the background to this challenging essay.

The motivations behind the publication of Italia S.p.A. lie in the government's announcement, in June 2002, of the creation of a UK-style "quango" to be known as Patrimonio S.p.A. ("Heritage P.l.C.", hence the book's title, Italia S.p.A.). This entity can, in principle and on certain poorly defined conditions, sell or lease certain cultural or heritage property belonging to the state with at most the signature of the Minister for Culture. This announcement was greeted with horror both in Italy and abroad - the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung titled its review "Rome's Talibans" (9^th July 2002), while other journalists announced that the Coliseum was about to be sold.

Salvatore Settis contends that the current government's attitude is the result of the policies of the governments that have ruled Italy in the last decade, both from the left and from the right. His perspective is that the 1990s have witnessed a real assault on Italy's vast cultural inheritance. Hence, the book's subtitle, L'Assalto al Patrimonio Culturale ("The Assault on Cultural Heritage"), and its front cover, Goya's bloody image of Saturn devouring his children, Saturn representing the Italian government's recent ruthless exploitation of its heritage and cultural assets. As supporting evidence, Settis places recent developments within an historical overview of recent
legislation[3].

Settis' arguments about the peculiarities of Italy's cultural heritage are centred on the argument summarised below. His objective is to make his readers understand why Patrimonio S.p.A. cannot possibly work as it has been established.

Contrary to what is widely perceived, Italy has always had an exceptionally strong and sophisticated conservation policy. This dates as far back as the 13^th century, is firmly rooted in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, was widely applied right before and after the unity of Italy, and is only partly due to the country's sheer number of museums and heritage sites of national, local and regional importance. As a matter of fact, according to UNESCO, 60% of the world's most important works of art are situated in Italy. Detailed examples are provided in Chapter 4. Suffice to say that, at the height of their power, both Siena and Venice had detailed urban planning regulations in place to protect their own monuments. In addition, Italy developed strict rules against the export of valuable art objects early on, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Finally, Italy has some of the world's leading conservation training institutes.

Italy has used its heritage assets to promote its civic identity and historical memory ever since the Renaissance. Heritage has always been perceived as one of the pillars of civilised society and it is the duty (and honour) of the State to preserve and enhance them. Perhaps the greatest achievement of Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici was the 1737 convention whereby she decided, with her successors to the Grand Duchy of Florence, that all of the art treasures belonging to the Medici family would become property of the city of Florence for the enjoyment of Florentines and of all people from all over the world.

Italian conservation policy has valued individual works of art, heritage sites and cultural institutions, large and small, as part of a wider, organic whole which is rooted within the landscape, making a close connection between cultural and natural heritage. The value of each item is not to been taken in isolation, but in the way it relates to its wider context. It is in this context that Italy has been famously described as an "open air" museum (or museo diffuso, according Antonio Paolucci, the Soprintendente to Florence's museums) where every single heritage item is noteworthy and of strategic importance. This is because each site and institution, even the piazze and the gardens, have historical significance and are museums in their own right. In other countries, such as the US, this is not the case because the majority of works of art have been extracted from their original settings.

Italy has not known the dramatic fractures other countries have experienced (for example, the Protestant iconoclasm or the French Revolution). Parts of the country have been economically stagnant for a long time (in particular, the South of Italy) and the role played by the Church and the upper classes has generally been highly conservative, which has had an impact on keeping buildings and cultural heritage.

Salvatore Settis is adamant that Italy should not attempt to emulate and import foreign (and particularly, American) models of cultural management without having studied them in great depth. He provides a detailed and thorough explanation of the American system and reassures the Italian reader that even in the US, cultural organisations are not profitable. He firmly believes that, taken as a whole, the American model is irrelevant to Italy because of the fundamental differences in cultural background - in particular, in the history behind the formation of the particular organisations and in the legislative framework within which they operate. This is not to deny that there might be particular aspects of legislation that ought to be studied in depth and then applied - in particular he acknowledges that Italy has a long way to go in promoting a more favourable tax environment to promote private philanthropy.

Throughout Italia S.p.A., Settis underlines the importance of understanding the Italian model before bringing about dramatic changes and advocates high quality training for the public and private operators of the cultural sector. He also believes that it is detrimental to continue to criticise and weaken Italy's public administration when there is nothing concrete to replace it. He emphasises that Italians are always convinced that Italy is a complete disaster and abroad everything is always better, and furthermore that Italians are superficial in their choice(s) of what it is they ought to copy from abroad. Obviously, this particular assertion has caused intense debate and further divided the camp between his supporters and detractors.

For Salvatore Settis, there are no easy solutions. What is most important is to raise the general public's awareness of these issues and for the State to devise public policy structures that provide the right balance between the private and the public sectors for the preservation and promotion (valorizzazione) of Italy's cultural heritage. In Italia S.p.A., he also proposes to compile a comprehensive inventory of all cultural property owned by the state. And thirdly, he emphasises the need for more and better quality training for both the public and the private operators of the cultural sector.

Italia S.p.A. caused immediate uproar. It was reviewed in the national press and it was widely debated amongst the chief operators of the cultural sector. Some commentators criticized Salvatore Settis for Italia S.p.A.'s polemic tones and argued that he was using Italia S.p.A. as a vehicle to prepare and launch his (still unannounced!) candidature to become the next Minister for Culture. Whether this is true or false is difficult to judge.

What is certain is that Italia S.p.A. damaged the reputation of the current government and in particular of the current Minister for Culture, Giuliano Urbani. The June 2002 legislative act was de facto blocked. The Minister for Culture was pushed to establish, in January 2003, the Consiglio Scientifico per la Tutela del Patrimonio Artistico with the objective of drawing up a list of state-owned cultural property and agreeing which of it cannot be sold or leased. Settis has been called to become one of its three high profile members.

This book illustrates both the fascination exerted by the US cultural system on the rest of the world, and the complexities associated with its import considered in a naïve fashion. It remains to be seen how European countries will manage to modernize their cultural systems and to what extent the American model may be grafted on to other societies.

Ursula Rimbotti
urimbotti@aeaconsulting.com

[3] For an exhaustive overview and analysis of the existing legislative framework within which Italian cultural organisations exist and of the main debates that have accompanied the legislative changes of the 1990s, see Silvia Dell'Orso's Altro Che Musei – La Questione dei Beni Culturali in Italia (Editori Laterza, Bari-Roma, 2002 – Robinson, Letture) and Rosanna Cappelli's Politiche e Poietiche per l'Arte (Mondadori Electa, Milano, 2002).

AEA Consulting LLC

© AEA Consulting 2000 - 2004

| PLATFORM | SERVICES | ABOUT AEA | CONTACT AEA |