Sunday at the Museum
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Sunday at the Museum
Pros and cons of Domenica al Museo
This past weekend in Italy was Domenica al Museo—Sunday at the Museum—an Italian government tourism initiative that offers free admission to all state museums and archaeological sites on the first Sunday of each month.
A lot of travelers and locals love Sunday at the Museum and will plan their itineraries around free museum Sunday. But not everyone is excited about the return of Domenica al Museo, citing sustainability, financial, and other issues.
Writing on LinkedIn, Fiamma Passarelli of Rome’s Details Guided Tours criticized Tourism Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, who tweeted about the success of free museum Sunday.
“People crowded for hours standing in line to get in free is not pedagogy of the masses,” wrote Passarelli, “it is not education, it is not culture offered to the populace, but it is a measure of pure populist demagogy. Museums and sites must be paid because gratuitousness mortifies the objective and cultural value of our heritage.”
Meanwhile, on Fineste sull’Arte, Federico Giannini has written a piece titled Crowds at free museums aren't a ‘great achievement,’ they're worrying:
A visit to a museum or archaeological site need not be a tour de force, it must not be uncomfortable: it must be as simple and pleasant as possible. And above all, it must really be an opportunity for citizens and tourists to discover a place of culture: it shouldn't take away half a morning spent in line. Also because it is self-defeating for everyone, because the time spent in queues can be spent by citizens and tourists in other and more profitable ways. Sure: the problem can easily be solved by introducing reservation-based queuing systems. The visit to the museum during the free Sunday will thus become a race to see who can click faster on the ministerial platforms, but at least, it will be said, the problem of queues will be solved, always assuming that museums know how to organize themselves properly (a title of access obtained in advance is not enough by itself to make the queues magically disappear).
There’s also staffing, which has become harder in the wake of the pandemic. Marina Blundo, in a piece titled The Unbearable Lightness of #domenicalmuseo, pointed out a number of problems following a free museum day last year:
Have you wondered how many public toilets the Uffizi has? Do you think they are enough to handle the needs of 23,000 people in a single day? Is there a cleaning team that sanitizes like at the airport? Perhaps in the Uffizi yes, but in many, many other museums no.
I probably have a warped perspective on free museum Sunday because I have lived a large chunk of my life in and around Washington, DC, where many museums are always free, not just on the first Sunday of the month. So, I was curious to read the aforelinked posts about the downsides of a free museum admission scheme—at least in a country like Italy. I was naive and had not thought through all of the pros and cons of Domenica al Museo.
What do you think? Comments are open.
The original Italian was “la gratuità mortifica il valore oggettivo e culturale del nostro patrimonio.”
Sunday at the Museum
It does sound as if the concept is better than the reality. Maybe limiting it to the tourist off-season--if there even is such a thing in Italy anymore--would help. I live outside DC and, like you, have benefited from “free art.”