National Museums in Italy: A Matter of Multifaceted Identity

Abstract

The report examines four case studies exemplifying the history of Italy’s national museums: the Galleria degli Uffizi of Florence; the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Naples; the Museo Preistorico ed Etnografico “L. Pigorini” of Rome; and the Galleria d'Arte Moderna – GNAM (with the adjoining Museo delle Arti del XXI secolo – MAXXI) of Rome. Their creation and development relate to diverse moments in history and to particular geographical contexts. The first two were founded before national unification, respectively in the Gran Duchy of Tuscany and in the Reign of Naples. They were opened to the public already in the 18 century, in order to celebrate the glory and power of their sovereign. The latter were instead inaugurated a few decades after the birth of the Reign of Italy (1861-1946), when the necessity to strengthen the role of its new capital – Rome – fostered the creation of new museums devoted to ‘novel’ assets such as technology, prehistory, and modern art. These new museums represented a novelty in the existing museographic panorama, mainly focused on archaeology as well as ancient and Renaissance art. The four case studies exemplify the issues which marked the development of Italy’s museums: the complex relationship between local and national identity; the difficult construction of a state system of heritage protection; the weakness of the state in building a sense of shared belonging from above; the fragility of museums as institutions with their own capacities for initiative and autonomy. This report faces these issues by focusing on the creation of the new state in 1861 and on the organization of a system of national protection characterised by a severe shortage of means and resources and, in general, by unawareness of the social and cultural value of Italy’s heritage. The scant capacity of planning of the national ruling classes in the cultural sector was aggravated by the wide resistance against the processes of nation-building which became particularly evident with the sale of ecclesiastical estates (1866). This phenomenon induced not only the growth of the national museums but also, and especially, the founding of a large number of civic museums. Between these two types of museum and between the identitarian processes they promoted, a competition arose, in relation to the idea of nation they respectively propounded. The complexity of the museum issue became even more evident at the beginning of the new century, when the creation of new government bodies for protection of the national heritage weakened the museum system, depriving it of scientific and managerial autonomy. The needs of the open-air heritage outweighed those of the museums, which thus became of secondary importance. Neglect of the country’s museums grew worse under fascism (1922-1943). Rather than museums, fairs and temporary exhibitions were better means for the regime to advance cultural policies with a view to building consensus. And there were also the archaeological sites, in Rome as in the African colonies, which could be used to celebrate Romanita, and to affirm an imperialism whose most powerful symbol was antiquity. Museographical experiments were

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