by It is this time of year again. As the crowd grows, historical Italian cities and museums become a backdrop for a sequence of absurd moments within the framework. Last year it was a young woman who hugged a (replica) Giambologna statue in the streets of Florence. This year the Uffizi gallery, Guardian of Florentine Art, was contaminated as a man who was posed for a photo in front of a portrait of Ferdinando de ‘Medici. While he imitated the hand-on hip in the imitation of this sprout of the soon-to-be Medici family, he slipped out and put his hand through the canvas. This comes shortly after an incident in a Verona Museum, in which a tourist was sitting on a work of art in the form of a crystal chair, also for a photo, and shattered it.
The director of the Uffizis says that he will now take measures against the swarm of visitors to “get into museums to make memes or make selfies for social media. We will set very precise limits and prevent behaviors that are not compatible with the meaning of our institutions and respect for the cultural inheritance.” But is it really fair to see that everyone who makes a selfie with a painting or shares his trips on social media as part of a barbaric horde who wants to destroy civilization? If so, the battle is lost.
Assessing how other people experience art in museums is a dubious activity. Just because someone accepts a stupid pose for a selfie does not mean that he is an idiot for the rest of the time – on the last days of Medici you could be an over -the -hearted doctoral student. Hypothetically.
Last year I spent one of the greatest treasures of the Uffizi, the birth of Venus by Botticelli, and people made selfies all the time. They did this responsibly and politely: alternately, not in conclusion. And nobody rejected it to stand in the way so that I could stare Venus’ pearl mouse or the waves that are sperm.
And although I don’t make selfies, I grab away on my cell phone – I have numerous Uffizi pictures and I was told that I took photos in the Church of Santo Spirito last year. For the administrator I was a tourist idiot, no matter that most of my snapshots were architectural details of this masterpiece of Brunelleschi.
It would be pure Snobism to assume that someone does not appreciate art just because his pleasure includes one of the most common types of the 21st century or even structured by people who structure all of their experiences. In the 19th and 20th centuries there were many cultural tourists in the old style who stuck from a landmark to another Baedeker travel guide from a landmark, but not much about what they saw. Who should say that today’s telephone clutches no longer appreciate Botticelli fans? The history of tourism is a story of fashion symptoms, absurdities and ignorance, but also a culturally uplifting experience. One thing is certain: the type of which the Uffizi hopes that it will be pursued under criminal law will not forget this portrait of Fernando de ‘Medici in a hurry.
As a child, I believed that the replica of David outside the Palazzo Vecchio was the real thing. So? Millions of people visit Italy. We see art between pizzas and ice, which misunderstanding what we see, people have to see locals like idiots. But the locals can also be confused by the sheer cultural overload – last year in Florence, a charming bar owner informed me that Michelangelo’s painting of God, who created Adam, was in the nearby Brancacci chapel.
Ruin tourists Florence? Balls. I mean the Medici balls or the palle, its coat of arms that are in Florence. Generations come and go in his shadow and the city changes unsuspectingly to accommodate them without ever losing their heart. As soon as every tourist ate eggs of Florentine, but now they would laugh at it to order it. Everything has to change so that everything can stay the same. The occasional selfie disaster will not spoil the incredible Italian kind. It is just another turn in the Grand Tour, the most ridiculous and sublime experience that many of us will ever have.
