The first 100 works of art return home, removed from the darkness of the deposits in the museums

One hundred works of art return home: they are the first 100 of an immense artistic heritage, equal to 4,542,242 works currently kept in the deposits of Italian museums, compared to the 432,069 on display. The idea, born from a personal inspiration of the Minister of Culture, Dario Franceschini, is to bring those works back to the light of the sun and to be exact in the places that have seen them conceive, born, create and maybe even keep until subsequent looting. . It starts with a hundred a year, but it could go indefinitely given the large numbers behind this operation, financed with one million euros for the restoration, relocation and placement in the new site. The ‘ribbon cutting’ of the Mic initiative is today, with the first two works – ‘Landscape with figures’ and ‘Card players’ oil paintings on canvas by Salvator Rosa – leaving Palazzo Barberini in Rome (where it was presented the event, in the great Salone Pietro da Cortona) to reach the National Museum of Matera, where they will remain renewable for ten years, followed by the ‘Immaculate Conception between Saints Peter and Paul’ oil painting on canvas by Giovanni Baglione and five paintings by Barocci, Pomarancio and Pesarese will leave the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan to be hosted the first in the Altieri palace in Oriolo Romano in the province of Viterbo and the other five in Urbino in the National Gallery of the Marche. Next Friday will be the turn of a painting and a bronze that the National Roman Museum will go to the province of Rome to be exhibited at the Museum of Roman Ships in Nemi and the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia. 3,652 works registered in the database created by the Directorate General for Museums of the Ministry of Culture, coming from deposits and reported by over 90 state museums. 36 works have already been identified, to be transferred between now and February. The initiative is also supplemented by an agreement signed by the Mic with Rai, for the production of a documentary lasting 50 minutes and 13 ‘instant docs’ of 20 minutes each, to tell the television audience the path that will bring back to the museums. the works previously kept in the deposits and now returned to new life. “I am really proud of this great team work, which lasted at least a year between conception, census and operational implementation – underlines the Minister of Culture, Dario Franceschini – Periodically the theme of the works kept in the deposits comes out, which in any case are not abandoned or buried. but they are part of museum life in terms of study or restoration and sometimes even visits: the deposits should not be demonized, they exist in every great museum in the world; but certainly the proportions between exhibited works and works kept in the dark of a deposit must be corrected and rebalance “. (by Enzo Bonaiuto)