MILAN (AP) — The German director of Florence’s Galleria dell'Accademia has succeeded in drawing visitors’ attention to masterpieces beyond Michelangelo’s towering David, while winning landmark court cases to protect the marble masterpiece's familiar image against misuse.
But even as Cecilie Hollberg highlights her achievements at Italy’s second-most-visited museum since arriving in 2015, rumors circulate that Italy’s far-right-led government intends to revoke the museum's independence once more, potentially draining resources and energy after eight years of innovations.
It would be deja vu all over again. In 2019, another right-wing government put the Accademia under the control of another Florence landmark, the Uffizi museum, and fired Hollberg on short notice. She was reinstated the following year and the Accademia’s autonomy restored after that government fell.
Hollberg said she can't explain why the Accademia’s role as an independent museum is again under siege. She said she has never had a conversation with the culture minister or anyone else in the ministry to make her case for the continued independence of the 141-year-old museum, which was founded as a teaching facility.
“That’s a very good question to ask: Why is the Accademia being targeted?’’ Hollberg said in telephone interview Monday with The Associated Press after leading foreign journalists on a tour of the museum.
Italy’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, has made clear he feels too many foreigners are running top Italian cultural institutions, not just museums but also its opera houses. In a state TV interview this spring, he denied the government was prejudiced against the foreign managers, but said their prevalence demonstrated “a certain xenophile provincialism that we must by every account appoint a foreigner.”
Ten museum director positions are in the process of being filled, including at the Uffizi and Milan’s Brera, both now held by foreigners. Unlike a much-ballyhooed 2014 open call for museum directors, when a left-wing government actively sought to bring in foreigners, the new bid now requires fluency in Italian.
Under contract through June 2024, Hollberg is nervously awaiting an expected government decree on culture to see if the museum again loses its independence. This time, the Accademia would not be put under the Uffizi but with the Bargello National Museum, another Florence institution that is home to Donatello’s more diminutive David.
One of Hollberg's top achievements as the Accademia's director has been to draw more attention to other masterpieces in the museum, including Giambologna’s sculpture “Rape of the Sabines,” as well as paintings by Botticelli and Perugino.
Renovating the halls and improving the lighting have produced a new presentation to the artworks, giving “the sensation that they just came out of the workshop yesterday, or the day before,’’ she said. Hollberg said visitors now slow down guides so they can take in the other artworks, and people are spread throughout the gallery, not just congregated at David’s feet.
She also won landmark court cases protecting rights to the use of David’s image, recovering some 300,000 euros ($337,000) this year and she expects that to double next year. Among the cases the museum has challenged is the French brand Longchamp's prominent placement of David's genitalia on a handbag.
“This is a very important precedent for all cultural heritage. It says that whoever uses the image of David without authorization not only must pay for offending the work,’’ she said. “I did this battle for the dignity of the work, and we won. It is an epochal victory.”
Along the way, she has also increased the number of visitors, in part by extending museum hours two nights a week to allow people to visit when there are fewer crowds. The museum has had over a million visitors so far this year, and is well on its way to exceeding its 2019 record of 1.7 million visitors.
“This museum has been reborn. It has retaken its place in the hearts of Florentines. It has been renovated without changing its essence. There are a series of positive changes, which is what counts, the results that have been brought home,’’ Hollberg said. “The nationality is not important.”
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This version has corrected the museum’s age to 141 years instead of 239.
