Uffizi Galleries and the Diffused Museum: the dissemination of the Italian cultural heritage brought back to its roots. To what extent is the challenging and extensive endeavour of putting into place a diffused museum culturally and economically sustainable?

Abstract

This dissertation aims to verify the extent to which the challenging and extensive endeavour of putting into place a "scattered museum" is culturally and economically sustainable in the long run. Therefore, an overarching analysis is going to be conducted about a case study coming from the Uffizi Galleries: the art exhibition projects of Uffizi Diffusi and Terre degli Uffizi, in which, by establishing collaborations with other smaller museums and local municipalities, the Florentine museum disseminates artworks - usually kept in the famous Uffizi depositories – around Tuscany. A historical inquiry, according to the found literature, is going to be proposed about: the relationship between cultural heritage, people, museums and national territory in Italy, the initial theorisation of the Museo Diffuso, and the phenomenon of over-tourism – especially in Florence – for whose partial solution the decentralisation of the cultural heritage would be optimal. In the section dedicated to the methodology, the conduct of Uffizi Galleries will be described within the aforementioned cultural program in which art is brought back to notable locations outside museum walls through medium-long temporary exhibitions, developing cultural and social connections throughout the regional territory. Lastly, the economic and cultural sustainability of such endeavours will be assessed considering both the collected data and the complexity of the tasks and how the re-emergence of these initiatives is changing the shape and status of museums themselves. Ultimately, it is possible to argue that there is a need for exhibitions capable of: perfectly merging protection and valorisation necessities, strengthening the relationship with the community of reference, giving people the possibility to reclaim their cultural heritage, and turning museums from cultural containers into territorial networks.