TN24 - Intervista a Roberto Ferrari, direttore del Museo Galileo di Firenze

Thanks, my pleasure. We've known each other for many years, so it's truly a reason for pride and honor for us to have you in this video interview for Taormina News 24.

Yes, yes. I am very happy both to have been chosen to carry forward an intellectual as well as institutional and organizational legacy that is very important, because the museum came from 40 years of direction by Paolo Galluzzi, an illustrious historian of science who made a significant contribution in many areas. A student of Eugenio Garin, who then dedicated himself to the history of science, not only Galileo, but addressing many topics and giving shape to this institute that has a very particular physiognomy. And what actually pushed me to take on this challenge was the fact that it is not just a museum, it is a library that holds a collection of over 250,000 volumes, it is a specialized library, obviously an archive, a series of archives, but it is also a multimedia laboratory that in-house creates software, programs, interfaces that are used for the projects we carry out, which are research projects, so first of all a study of sources that then very often turns into projects aimed at a non-specialist audience. So when in 2021 I started this adventure, I was aware, but now I am even more so of how important the mission of this institute is.

Yes, in August 2015, after a selection that the President of the Region wanted to make, he wasn't even required to do it, and a selection in which I participated, I took up service as director of the department that was then called Culture and Research and it brought together all cultural policies, that is, entertainment, cultural heritage, obviously everything, libraries and so on, with the research part and also rights, all study. It seemed to me a wonderful challenge because for the first time a region brought together culture and research and not with tourism, which seemed like a brilliant idea and unfortunately later abandoned. Now even in Tuscany the two portfolios are no longer together, in my opinion it's a shame. And it was a wonderful experience for me because I have always dealt with public policies, I studied these topics and worked as a consultant first, and therefore as an external for public administrations. When you then find yourself there, obviously, if you have built a path before, which fortunately for me was very rich, then at the moment when you have to decide and sign, you obviously have the opportunity to assert what you had understood before. It was five very intense years, also because at a certain point we encountered the sad event of Covid and therefore we had to cope as best we could with a huge audience of beneficiaries or subjects who looked to the Region as a subject that was presumed to be able to provide decisive help. And in those years one of the most complex operations I had to manage was precisely the Alinari affair. At a certain point it became known that the company, the SPA, that had bought and then enriched the heritage of the Fratelli Alinari, which was founded in the mid-1800s, when there wasn't even a unified Italy, so in the grand duchy of Tuscany, had put up for sale the premises where, from about 1875, if I remember correctly, all the heritage was located. Imagine that there were about 230,000 photographic plates censused, only for the glass part, so to speak. Incredible, an incredible thing, which moreover when the move was made, it was discovered that there were many more, and it was very complex both to understand everything because there were 5 million objects, so something never studied before in Europe, an analysis of that type had never been done, then to find a method of analysis for the evaluation, and there clearly arose, to put it euphemistically, what I would call a heated dialectic between me and the owner family.

Yes, I think now I can say that. There was a moment, I remember it was a Saturday afternoon, and I believe it was part of, indeed I think I can say with certainty that it was part of the negotiation, where obviously sometimes you bluff a bit, sometimes you play hardball, within the logic of negotiations. And I remember that the president of the board of directors, who obviously managed the company, the SPA, told me that they would accept the offer. Consider that the family's proposal was over 42 million euros for a part of the heritage that did not include everything that was later bought. For example, the contracts, to make a long story short, the contracts with which the company first and the foundation we created later manage all the licensing, so they manage third-party funds. It seemed to me that that part was also interesting from an economic point of view, so I wanted to buy the historical heritage that had accumulated over the years, but I thought it was important to include the active contracts. In addition, there was also a beautiful art printing press and many other things, so to cut a long story short, I wanted to reach a point that was what we had understood with my colleagues from the budget department where we could get to, and they instead said no. And that Saturday afternoon when she called me, she told me that they would not accept the offer. And at that point I said, her name is Paola, and I said 'Paola, I'm sorry, but there is no other. At this point, if you don't sell us everything, we won't even buy the first part, the one on which the offer had been made.' Did you put them in a tight spot? Yes, I put them in a tight spot, obviously after having done some internal consultations, and I remember calling an extraordinary board meeting, I think, on Sunday, and then Monday morning everything was closed because we were at the tail end of the legislature, there had been an extension due to Covid, and this allowed us, and it was a fundamental time for me, not only to buy the heritage, which is something that happens all the time, public entities buy, but to create an entity that would manage it and put it, hopefully, in a position to manage that heritage in the best way. Today, the Alinari Foundation for Photography is an entity that certainly will have to grow, improve, and do many things, but it was born together with that operation, and this is an interesting topic in my opinion because a heritage alone does nothing, you need the right people, you need entities and adequate tools to manage it in the best way. At least that's what we tried.

There is a myth, let's say, the myth that has unfortunately sometimes been submerged by a rhetoric built on that myth about the theme that culture creates value, and even, let's say, my former colleagues, I by training am an economist of culture, so I played at the beginning of my career with all those economic models that tell you that one euro invested in culture produces more. In truth, one euro invested in culture, if invested badly, produces a lot of damage, and a serious economic model should include the determining variable of the quality of spending. It's not how much you spend sometimes, but how you spend. There are two quick considerations to make. The first is that certainly culture can have social and economic functions. This is nothing new. But how these functions are best performed is a matter of construction, of skills, of tools, sometimes coincidences, and projects that have a medium to long-term horizon. So, it doesn't exist. You in your journey have found the perfect balance between the dynamics of management, economic and technical, and those then based on the concrete facts of valorization of the heritage. Yes, let's say just look at the history of institutions that have longer lives, right? Like in Florence, among the things that perhaps are less obvious is that there is not only a heritage of monuments, there are institutions that have hundreds of years of life. And this is the aspect that intrigues me. My intellectual curiosity is always how cultural institutions are born, how they grow, and sometimes die, and looking at those that have survived a thousand moments of crisis, including the Galileo Museum, which obviously had enormous difficulties at some points in its 100 years of life because it was born in 1925. It makes you reflect that those that had good luck were those built on a serious project, that is, scientifically valid. Then they may have had a thousand social, economic, tourist derivatives of various kinds, but the base was a serious project, built with the head.

It's difficult to say, in the sense that there has been especially in recent years a tendency to emphasize the economic dimension of culture, which theoretically for my training should be an aspect to be happy about, but the way it is being done, I believe, betrays the objectives of those who 100 years ago, maybe even 200, had begun to introduce the theme that culture has a value, but it is not only that economic value, right? I was born on Via Teatro Greco, so clearly for me the Greek-Roman theater, when I was little, seemed exclusively a place for tourists, and having the balcony of my bedroom that overlooked the street, I heard the worst stupidities of the guides or of those whose level was not, let's say, consistent with anything I read in books. But jokes aside, this is a dimension that certainly can be improved and from which to start, because obviously it will rise above all intellectual issues, and the fact of having visitors is always a good thing, but it is a limit, let's say, that beyond the economic rent. On this, a serious project cannot be built, a project that also capitalizes on the mistakes and things we have learned from those who have already faced these paths. It is not the only Greek theater, archaeological site where shows are held, and so it's difficult to say how it's going because there has been this season, which is still ongoing, in which cultural institutions are asked to be managed better, which is a good thing provided that you understand what the quality of the cultural project is, but to do this there is no accounting metric, you need people who have dedicated a lifetime to those projects. I run an institute that has a collection of scientific instruments, so my scientific community of reference are historians of science, who don't always agree among themselves, but for me it is fundamental that the things we do have value, in the sense that they make that community grow, and then if that grows well, the conditions for giving all visitors, even the less expert, even those who enter a museum to see Galileo's middle finger, to discover that there is a world beyond that middle finger.

Oh my goodness! No, frankly, my dream is to do well what I am asked to do. Yes, maybe my dream, well, one day I would like to open a bookstore. I had even seen a place here in Taormina that I liked, because it pains me to see my town without a real bookstore. This pains me greatly and it is a fact, also because it is a paradox, right? In a city where very often, so to speak, they talk about culture, sometimes they even preach it, but then, at the end of the day, there isn't even a bookstore, so probably, culture should be done a little less in salons and a little more in the squares among the people, in the places historically designated to transmit this culture. I became passionate about this, let's call it sector, and because despite seeing it full of rhetoric, everyone talks about culture, even those who have no real curiosity. I have sometimes heard thoughtful tones from people who want to teach what a museum is and have never entered one, you understand? You can tell after two sentences that they have never seen it, yet they want to tell you what to do, and so clearly the world of culture is one where everyone feels entitled, no one would feel able to discuss how to do a heart surgery, but everyone can debate like in football about what cultural institutions should say or do. However, what I see in Sicily, beyond Taormina, but it's a problem of all of Southern Italy, is the infrastructure, that is, we cannot pass from culture as myth, as rhetoric, which also has its symbolic value, but it has a system of services. I remember my thesis discussed the reform of archaeological parks in Sicily, we are talking about the 2002 reform and the model of the department of cultural heritage of the region. So I was attached to that theme from those years and I have not seen great changes. No, it continues to be words that generate words, and if one says, I remember discussing with my professor, who is from Agrigento, he was my professor at university, and we discussed, it's nice to see the bulldozers demolishing illegal buildings, no doubt, that is fundamental, but then you have to demonstrate that culture is a service that gives value to those who live in those places, right? It's not just tourism, it's the possibility that I think is perhaps the real reason why I started this path, that I am convinced that even holding a book in your hand can change your life, can change the destiny of a person who wants to do so, because in front of that there is no issue of disparity of money. You can be poor, but you come across a book that changes your life and you can live a very dignified life. And I always tell this story that I like very much, that I like because I find it very beautiful, about what a museum is: it's not just entertainment, you go there because it's raining, you don't know where to take shelter, that's fine, but in our institute there was a boy who worked as a motorcycle mechanic, he became passionate about Leonardo's machines because he is a good mechanic, and when he came there, the previous director told him, 'Yes, but to study these things you have to learn Latin, do philosophy, get a PhD, you have to do a lot of things,' and he set to work and did it all. Today he is one of the most expert teachers in Italy on Leonardo's machines. And what happened? He came across a cultural object that in itself has no value. The collection I direct is made of brass, glass, wood, things that make no sense. They only have meaning if someone studies them and extracts some value from them. And I think the most beautiful thing in all this world is that with a book in your hand you can come from any background, you can have had the worst difficulties in your life, but if you are lucky and sometimes tenacious, it can change your life.