Since the end of the 90s, innovative legislation brought about substantial changes in the related cultural administration system. The main trend was “désétatisation”: i.e. gradually entrusting third sector status to public cultural institutions to grant them more autonomy and encouraging them towards public/private partnership. The logic behind these organizational changes was a) to pursue a more efficient management of these institutions, traditionally paralysed by red tape; b) to ease the burden they represent for the public purse by facilitating fundraising from the private sector.
The first quasi-independent (arm’s length) public institutions involved in this process have been:
- the fourteen main opera houses (“Enti autonomi lirici”) – including La Scala in Milan, the Rome Opera, La Fenice in Venice, the Maggio Fiorentino, the S. Carlo in Naples, etc., and the only national orchestra, the Accademia di S. Cecilia – transformed in 1996 into “Fondazioni liriche” (see chapter 3.3);
- La Biennale di Venezia, Triennale di Milano and La Quadriennale di Roma: public bodies organizing prestigious exhibitions and events in the domain of the visual and / or performing arts, all transformed into foundations facilitated by the public sector;
- the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia, composed of two separate entities: the Cineteca nazionale (the national film archive), and the Scuola nazionale di cinema.
The reform was deemed necessary for rationalizing the exceeding costs of such privileged institutions, amounting to as much as half of the total state expenditure for the performing arts and the film industry. Leg. Decrees 367/1996 and 134/1998 were thus aimed at transforming the opera houses into more flexible “lyric foundations” with a private status, possibly able to attract private capital through fiscal incentives. However, in the following years, a serious difficulty emerged in obtaining the required private support and further government measures were adopted to ensure the economic and financial sustainability of these entities (see chapter 3.3 and 4.2.3).
At the central level, it is also important to highlight the process of reorganization based on economic and managerial autonomy which has involved several major state sites since 2014. To date, there are 44 Museums, Monuments and Archaeological sites with special autonomy, coordinated by the DG of Museums (see chapter 3.1).
Following the reform process started towards the end of the 90s, the number of organizational changes that involved cultural public institutions has grown exponentially in the past twenty-five years. Significant cases of public-private partnership in the management of cultural institutions (theatres, auditoriums, exhibitions centres, museums, etc.) have been until now even more boldly experimented by local authorities through autonomous operated organizations (“gestioni autonome”). This process was initiated by Law 142/1990 on Local Autonomies and has been further encouraged by Decree 267/2000, singling out different innovative models for the operation of “public non-economic local services”.
Among the most frequently adopted models for cultural organizations have been foundations, institutions, associations, companies, and consortia. A significant number of entities mainly active in the management of theatres, museums and sites was, in particular, organized in the form of foundations. The reason for this model lies in a tendency of public administrations to consider foundations as flexible tools, particularly fit for privately pursuing public aims: hence the growing propensity to use them as new agents of policies, as well as to foster public-private partnership. Modernization in managerial procedures and techniques, increased capacity building, the fostering of innovative forms of public private partnership, are some of the ingredients of their growing success.
An important area of progressive reform also concerns partnerships between public cultural institutions and private profit and non-profit actors. Public-private partnerships in Italy have been mainly of a traditional type, with the private sector that intervenes through public tenders for the concession of services within public spaces (museums, archaeological sites, etc.). In recent years, actions taken have increasingly seen public actors (public bodies and universities) and private actors (associations, foundations, cooperatives) collaborate in the management of public cultural heritage. The third sector reform provides new forms of collaboration between third sector organizations and public administrations for the development of public-private partnerships (see chapter 1.2.5).
Furthermore, in terms of trends and strategies, it is necessary to refer to the impacts generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, starting from the first months of 2020, on the system of Italian cultural institutions, with the main support measures undertaken at the government level.
Obviously, the frame and the entire organization of heritage management at all levels has been hit with unpredictable violence by the pandemic. The business model of museums and monuments based not only on public funding, but also on a significant contribution of tickets sold, entered in a dramatic crisis after lockdowns and the adoption of extraordinary constraints reducing the audience capacity for pandemic risks prevention[1].
This unexpected situation pushed the Government and the Ministry of Culture to adopt, since the first months of the pandemic, exceptional measures aimed to sustain the crisis of a large number of institutions and to counter the negative effects of the emergency on the cultural and tourism sector (see chapter 3.1 and 7.1.3). Measures were extended and supplemented in 2021 due to the continuation of the pandemic crisis.
Adding to these challenges, in order to sustain the investments in protecting, restoring and enhancing the material and intangible heritage, the MiC established in 2020 a Cultural Fund, whose total endowment could be increased in partnership with private actors, through activities of micro-funding and crowdfunding. Finally, a significant amount of resources will be invested in the cultural sector starting from the 2021, thanks to the PNRR, the National Plan of Resilience and Resistance.
[1] Italian official statistics evaluate a loss of approx. 78 millions Euros in just three months from March to May 2020, due to the lockdown, only for the State Museum.
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