In September we will have a new government and the director of the Uffizi Galleries Eike Schmidt puts his hands on: “The most important challenge for those who will have to manage cultural policy in the near future is that of museum personnel, which is constantly decreasing”. Schmidt reveals that he has received a circular from the Mic which compresses the staff of the Galleries by a further 9%, while visitors, after the Covid break, have grown exponentially, returning to pre-pandemic levels (already the most visited museum in Italy in 2021, the Uffizi, in July, reached the record of 427,856 visitors, and almost 43,000 in the weekend of August 15th, although on the 15th only Boboli could be entered).
The staff, laments Schmidt, is “everywhere reduced to the bone and continues to shrink”, even in the face of aging (between 2013 and 2022, 166 employees retired at the Uffizi, and just 34 entered) . And in the absence of a quick solution, according to the director, the result will be dramatic: “Close museums”, including the largest ones, despite a top 2022, and the real myriad of projects, events, exhibitions and new openings, with which almost everyone, in Florence and beyond, looks to the future.
Schmidt and the “vulnus”
The director explains: “The fact that there is no co-management of human resources, left to the central administration by the Franceschini reform, which established museums with special autonomy, remains a vulnus.” An accusation that was immediately received yesterday by the reply of the general director of the Mic museums, Massimo Osanna, who, after admitting “a dramatic and widespread shortage of museum staff”, explained that the ministry is “fixing shelter” with 1,053 new security officers on duty since September, 400 other new hires since December, and another 1053 by 2023. As for the 9% cut at the Uffizi, according to Osanna – who refers for details to a forthcoming decree of the minister – of « a delicate work of rationalization of resources, which reconciles the interests of large and small attractors looking at the national museum system as a whole ».
The president of Aici (Association of Italian Cultural Institutions) and member of the Uffizi board of directors Valdo Spini fully agreed with Schmidt, who yesterday explained: “Autonomy also on personnel would effectively complete the important reform of museums” by Franceschini, while the Undersecretary for Culture Lucia Borgonzoni speaks of “a lack of staff in museums to be remedied with an extraordinary recruitment plan”.