Visitors at the Uffizi Gallery

The Italian ministry of culture has released a shortlist of candidates to head 20 of the country’s most important state museums. There are ten nominations for each museum, so a total of 200. A number of foreign applicants made the shortlist, with some names in the running for more than one institution. 

The final decisions are expected to be made around the end of July by Dario Franceschini, Italy’s minister of culture, and Ugo Soragni, the recently appointed head of museums for the ministry. 

James Bradburne, the former head of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, and the Italian Renaissance expert, author and curator David Ekserdjian, have been shortlisted for three museums. Both are in the running for the Galleria Borghese, Rome and the Accademia, Venice, with Bradburne also nominated for the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, and Ekserdjian for the Uffizi, Florence. 

Gerald Matt, the former director of the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, has also been nominated for three museums: the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, the Pinacoteca di Brera and the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. The Museo di Capodimonte also counts Sylvain Bellenger, the French curator of Medieval through Modern European sculpture and painting at the Art Institute of Chicago, among its nominees.

German-born Eike Schmidt, the curator of decorative arts and sculpture at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, is competing against Bradburne and Ekserdjian for the Galleria Borghese and the Uffizi. On the shortlist for the Uffizi is also Eleni Vassilika, the Greek-American curatorial director of the National Trust. 

On the Italian front, Antonio Natali, the former head of the Uffizi, is reapplying for his old position. The curators Danilo Eccher and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, and the former director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Cristiana Collu, have all been nominated for the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome).

The most recurring nomination is for Martina Bagnoli, the curator for Medieval art and manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, who is in the running for 12 institutions: the Galleria Borghese, the Uffizi, the Accademia, Venice, the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, the Accademia, Florence, the Galleria Estense, Modena, the Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica, Rome, the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, the Palazzo Reale, Genoa, and the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua.