Finaldi (National Gallery): “My idea of ​​a museum”

Gabriele Maria Finaldi is Italian on his father's side while his mother is Anglo-Polish, London was his birthplace in 1965 and the work that makes his heart leap more than the others is the Deposition from the Cross by Rogier van der Weyden, oil on panel preserved in the Prado Museum in Madrid.

Yesterday Finaldi was in Rome at the Vatican Museums to present the experience of his National Gallery at the international conference "Preventive conservation in large museums", the management of the general public, the need for maintenance, cleaning and safety which are fundamental principles in of the National Gallery and valid for its preservation.

There is still a lot of Italy in London, not only you as director of one of the best known museums in the world, but also past exhibitions such as Beyond Caravaggio or Michelangelo and Sebastiano or just these days the one on Mantegna and Bellini. Would you like to have work experience in Italy or is hosting Italian masterpieces in her museum a way to feel closer to her? 

“In the meantime, I would be delighted to continue our Italian activities in London, because the collections are so marked by the Italian cultural presence. We find Italy in the collections, libraries and archives. The Italian presence in the British collections and in London in particular is very powerful. There is great enthusiasm in the audience. I would certainly like to work more with Italian colleagues. We already do it in terms of exchanging works, but it would be even more beautiful to set up exhibitions together”.

If you were in Italy, if you were entrusted with a public office, what would you do to bring art closer to citizens and visitors? We recall that by tradition many British museums are free, while in Italy the controversy over the cancellation of the free first Sunday of the month at the museum is recent. From abroad, what do you think about it: would the British method be applicable to the peninsula? Does free museums really demean art?

“Free admission is not the panacea, but in an environment where it exists, it is possible to create an audience that frequents the museum often and which therefore becomes an audience engaged with the museum and which creates a special relationship with museum institutions that when you visit only tourist level is not formed. Italians live with art around them and they do it very naturally. It's not so much the British model that needs to be introduced in Italy, the important thing is that the museum as well as being a tourist attraction is vital for citizens. In London it is a tradition to keep museums free, but it has increasingly become a specific choice: the museum is public and belongs to everyone. In Great Britain, when we say National we mean the nation, the people, the citizens. If the museum is ours, we can visit it whenever we want as many times as we want. In doing so, the relationship between the public and the institution remains close. The National Gallery's budget is approximately £40 million a year, with the state contributing £24 million".

Because art belongs to the people, it forms their national identity, the gratuitousness of art does not demean its meaning, it makes it human and brings it closer to the citizens. "Yes. Visiting exhibitions can be seen as going to the cinema, people go to the cinema quite often. It would be desirable for people to visit the art gallery of their city with the same frequency. The exhibitions change, the films change. Our collections are enormous, it would be enough to experience the extraordinary richness of art more consistently. This is also linked to a certain training, to the commitment in the school environment, to opening up to curiosity towards art”.

The influence of social networks and the use of new technologies have changed the way of making and experiencing art. Have both the experience of the exhibition and the audience changed compared to before? The Internet makes knowledge of the art world within reach, how does this affect the desire of visitors to continue travelling?

The National Gallery was one of the first institutions to allow visitors to take photos during their museum experience. Firstly because society has asked for it and the gallery wants to be part of the society that has given so much importance to communication. On the other hand, the way we communicate has changed radically and this can help us make our content more accessible. There are clearly other contents to take into consideration: the experience in front of the work is not the same as seeing the image online. It approximates real experience, which in any case remains the privileged one. Of course, it's not accessible to everyone.

In your opinion, for the museum's economy, it is the permanent exhibitions that attract visitors - I am thinking of the Mona Lisa who does not leave the Louvre - or do you think it is necessary to circulate art, encourage loans between museums, create innovative exhibitions, and make l usable art universally? Do visitors travel to see the museum or do they follow the temporary exhibition?

Both things, but you have to live in reality. The event aspect of the exhibition cannot be pretended to not exist, it exists and it is important. In addition to the collections that we must always try to activate to maintain the public's interest, the exhibition becomes a moment of research and attention to the public and the approach to new audiences. There is a lot of competition between institutions and even between cities, and this makes everything complicated, but the cultural offer is now so great that we are lucky. Organizing exhibitions creates moments of encounter between institutions and between countries, between experts from various places and are very important moments of exchange.