The Wall Street Journal had a recent article about the appointment of Mario Resca to the “supermanager” role of overseeing Italy’s 460+ nationally owned museums and cultural sites.
Mr. Resca describes himself as a “turnaround specialist.” The connotations of “turnaround specialist” in the US are scary (axe wielders mandating mass layoffs) so I hope the connotations are different in Italian. But there’s no escaping the implication that if a “turnaround specialist” is needed, then something is failing and needs turning around.
There’s a petition against Mr. Resca’s appointment, protesting his lack of museum qualifications and his assumed corporate mindset and the potential “commoditization” of Italy’s cultural icons.
Resca is a former head of McDonald’s Italy, which is probably more offensive to people than his turnaround label. Few things are more publicly despised in Europe than McDonald’s. (As Andrei Markovits discusses in Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (The Public Square)
( BusinessWeek has an article about McDonald’s redesigned their European restaurants to fit local customer tastes — muted earth tone colors, wood and leather instead of plastic. The article quotes Dennis Hennequin (Frenchman and current head of McDonald’s Europe) as saying that “the brand position is different in different parts of the world” and “in Europe it’s more about the experience [rather than convenience and affordability].” )
Museums survive on a paradox. Most say they’re about aesthetic values and preserving cultural heritage. But this takes money. Lots of money. That money has to come from somewhere. In the US, that money comes mostly from private donors (corporate, foundation, individual). In Italy as in much of Europe, most of that money comes from the government/tax revenue.
But tax revenues in Europe are getting squeezed, what with aging populations and social safety nets. Politicians will pay pensions before they’ll pay museum support, so tax-funded museum budgets have nowhere to go but down.
So Europe’s museums are holding their noses and looking at some fundraising schemes that previously would be labeled as crass (a la Americaine): visible corporate sponsorship, advertising, big-name traveling exhibitions, etc. The Louve is a leader in this area, as Time reports here , renting out galleries for black tie events and co-branding Da Vinci Code materials. Lee Rosenbaum’s excellent CultureGrrl blog says that Resca has already done a US tour, visiting American museum directors and supposedly kicking around ideas for object exchanges and shows.
This commercialized approach is as controversial in Italy as it is in France. This Guardian article talks about the museum funding crunch in Italy. People in Venice were “outraged” by billboard-sized ads draped over cultural buildings. The heritage administrator Renata Codello pointed out that her budget was down by 25% and said, “If the geniuses who criticize us give me the money for the restorations, then I’ll do away with [the giant ads] at once. We don’t have alternatives.”
The protesters do have justification (other than simple distain for commercial activity). Public/tax funding isn’t just a financial mechanism; it’s a symbol for what that country considers to be “of public interest” — things that in some moral way, the public has a vested interest and a say in. Psychologically, people feel more ownership and more permission to express their expectations around a publicly-funded organization. Highly visible corporate signage or advertising sends the message that the symbolic ownership of the institution has changed, from public hands into private ones. It’s like putting up a company billboard in a national park on public land. It can be seen as a type of cultural colonization, where a more dominant culture (in this case, commercial culture) intrudes upon the traditional turf of a less dominant culture, taking over the artifacts and subverting the values of the invaded culture.
And, advertising itself, by its very presence, communicates meanings that are distinct from many museums’ stated values. About the importance of consumer spending. Of identity acquired via purchased objects versus identity acquired via nationality or cultural affiliations. The intentional association of corporate-mass-produced consumer objects with art and heritage objects (thus sharing the halo effect of the nation’s most prized cultural artifacts, and using it to glamorize a consumer purchase — enabling a higher price point for those consumer items). It’s the basics of advertising: associate your product with something “good” (as defined by your target consumer) — in this case, associating your product with with the aristocratic ambiance of the Louvre or the Uffizi.
Resca, to his credit, is making all the right noises about finding a middle path between cultural values and financial results. The WSJ article quotes him as saying “I like this debate. It means people care….[any solutions] must be shared by all concerned parties, because they will have to do it…I’m a facilitator. My role is to be a coach.” He points out that none of Italy’s museums are among the “top 10 visited museums in the world” and his goal is to is to change that by making “the visiting experience….more user-friendly and fun.” The corporate buzzwords may make some listeners cringe, but at least he sounds more like a corporate version of Mr Rogers rather than Attila the Hun.
Some further commercialization/”packaging” of European museums seem inevitable. If it’s corporate lucre vs extinction, I prefer that the museums choose the lucre (while negotiating hard to protect their cultural ideals).
For more on the “American management style for museums,” see Neil Kotler and Philip Kotler (, yes, Phil Kotler the corporate marketing guru) 1998 book Museum Strategy and Marketing : Designing Missions, Building Audiences, Generating Revenue and Resources
