Italian Museums Research Articles

Evaluating Museum Virtual Tours: The Case Study of Italy

Virtual tours in museums are an ideal solution for those that are not able to visit a museum or those who want to have a small taste of what is presented in the museum before their visit. However, these tours often encounter severe problems while users interact with them. In order to check the status of virtual tours of museums, we present the implementation of an evaluation experiment that uses a combination of two multi-criteria decision making theories, namely the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). AHP has been used for the estimation of the weights of the heuristics and fuzzy TOPSIS has been used for the evaluation of virtual tours of museums. This paper presents the exact steps that have to be followed in order to implement such an experiment and run an example experiment for virtual tours of Italian museums.

Is OpenStreetMap a good source of information for cultural statistics? The case of Italian museums

Data coming from Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) are a precious source of knowledge, especially when official statistics are difficult to produce at a detailed level. However, in order to be used effectively as a supporting source, Volunteered Geographic Information must meet thorough standards of quality. In this work, the quality of OpenStreetMap (OSM) – in terms of completeness, positional and semantic accuracies – is evaluated in the cultural sector with reference to the official survey of Italian museums. This study offers novel insights into the quality assessment of OpenStreetMap points of interest, and it is a useful benchmark for the use of unconventional information for cultural analysis and policy. The results show that the number of museums mapped in OpenStreetMap accounts for 86% of the official total while – in terms of completeness – OpenStreetMap coverage is 39% overall. The distance is less than 150 metres for 77.7% of the matching museums and the similarity index among denominations is higher than 0.9 for more than half of the museums. OpenStreetMap cultural information appears to be quantitatively rich as well as positionally and semantically accurate. However, some concerns do arise about the reliability and consistency of tags and metadata.

Branching out beyond the core: Museums hosting events

• We study the determinants for museums to organise events except exhibitions. • We run logistic regressions using a dataset of 3659 Italian museums. • Ownership model, factors endowment, full operation, connectedness are influential. • Tourism vocation of the area and local potential audience are not significant. • In highly populated areas, museums would organise events if they budget increased.

Museums and human remains: Ethical issues in curating and displaying

Summary In this contribution, we would like to address the ethical issues concerning detention and exposition in museums of human remains. Italian literature on the subject is still very poor in contrast with other countries. We will present two emblematic examples of complex cases involving Italian museums, requiring ethical reflection. The first is the case of the Gorini Collection (Lodi) and the recent donation of the mummies of the “Giuseppe Paravicini Collection” belonged to incurable patients of the mental hospital of Mombello, near Milan. The second is the case of the mummified remains of the head of a Celano child in the anthropological section of Chieti's University Museum, also known as “Celano child”. These cases highlight and examine the difficult and problematic issues of accessibility and providing safeguard for cultural heritage and also ethical order.

Linking employees’ affective commitment and knowledge sharing for an increased customer orientation

PurposeBuilding on the attitude–behavior relationship model, this study aims to contribute to customer orientation literature by suggesting that service employees’ commitment (i.e. personal attitude) affects their customer orientation via the effect of their participation in knowledge sharing with colleagues (i.e. employees’ behavior).Design/methodology/approachThe empirical analysis has been developed around survey data, collected from 165 service workers of Italian museums. The hypotheses are tested through the SPSS PROCESS macro plugin.FindingsDrawing on the importance of human capital to tourism organizations, this study illustrates that affective commitment has a positive and significant influence on employees’ customer orientation, and that this relationship is fully mediated by knowledge-sharing behaviors.Practical implicationsAs attitudes are more stable than behaviors, the findings suggest that managers of tourism organizations implement appropriate selection and recruitment techniques, together with adequate involvement and empowerment activities, to identify and support individuals whose attitudes fit the organizational goals.Originality/valueAcknowledging the contribution that workers can give to service organizations’ success, this paper enriches the understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the relationship between employees’ attitudes and their orientation toward the customer. Building on the cognitive dissonance theory, it adds to extant research on the individual antecedents of employees’ customer orientation by shedding light on the attitude–behavior relationship in tourism organizations.

The Sicilian Wolf: Genetic Identity of a Recently Extinct Insular Population.

Historically, many local grey wolf (Canis lupus) populations have undergone substantial reductions in size or become extinct. Among these, the wolf population once living in Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, was completely eradicated by human activity in the early decades of the 20th century. To gain a better understanding of the genetic identity of the Sicilian wolf, we used techniques for the study of ancient DNA to analyze the mitochondrial (mt) variability of six specimens stored in Italian museums. We were able to amplify a diagnostic mtDNA fragment of the control region (CR) in four of the samples. Two of the samples shared the same haplotype, differing by two substitutions from the currently most diffused Italian wolf haplotype (W14) and one substitution from the only other Italian haplotype (W16). The third sample showed a previously unreported wolf-like haplotype, and the fourth a haplotype commonly found in dogs. All of the wolf haplotypes analyzed in this study belonged to the mitochondrial haplogroup that includes haplotypes detected in all the known European Pleistocene wolves and in several modern southern European populations. Unfortunately, this endemic island population, which exhibited unique mtDNA variability, was definitively lost before it was possible to understand its taxonomic uniqueness and conservational value.

Dragonfly biodiversity 90 years ago in an Alpine region: The Odonata historical collection of the MUSE (Trento, Italy).

BackgroundHistorical collections of natural science museums play a fundamental role in documenting environmental changes and patterns of biodiversity transformation. This considered, they should have a pivotal role to plan conservation and management actions.The MUSE - Science Museum of Trento is an Italian regional museum preserving about 5.5 million items (organised in 297 collections). About one million of them are invertebrates, 70% of which are of local origin, gathered in the collection "Miscellanea Invertebrati". Odonata account for a minor part of this collection; however, most of them are of local or regional relevance. A complete catalogue of this collection does not exist to date.New informationThe collection was studied in 2017-2018 and this contribution aims to present the Catalogue of the historic collection of Odonata of the MUSE - Museo delle Scienze of Trento (Italy).In all, 836 specimens of adult dragonflies and damselflies are found in the collection referring to an overall 56 species. The collection covers a period between 1924 and 1957 and refer to 74 defined localities, all located in northern Italy (most of them in Trentino - Alto Adige Region).The samples conserved in the collection are, for several species, the only indisputable confirmation of their former occurrence in that region.

Reassessing two nineteenth-century proto-ethnographic collections in Italian museums

Abstract Overshadowed by the immense cultural patrimony of Italy, within its extensive museum systems, many historically significant nineteenth-century Italian ethnographic collections from non-western peoples have remained ‘dormant’ and largely unknown to museum scholars until recently. The world’s first ‘museum of anthropology’ was founded in Florence, in 1869. By then Italian explorers and collectors had already assembled extensive collections that may be considered ‘proto-ethnographic’. This paper reassesses two exemplary proto-ethnographic collections by Giacomo Costantino Beltrami (1779–1855) from the Upper Mississippi region, and by Antonio Spagni (1809–1873) in the Upper Missouri River basin. In recent years, largely outside Italy, new uses for legacy museum collections have arisen. This has in turn had a strong effect on the organizational structures and approaches of Italian museums to their historic ethnographic collections.

A view from the brow of the hill. Partial reflections on autonomy, models and priorities

ABSTRACTLately, since the ‘riforma Franceschini’, we saw an increasing growth of the pursuit of an effective model to run Italian public museums since February 2016, after having worked more than 20 years as superintendent of artistic and historic heritage in Milan, and being assistant and director of the Pinacoteca di Brera in 2015, I became for 1 year director of the newborn Fondazione Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, going successively back for few months to Brera. Thanks to the twofold experience, the former more about the private side, the latter watching from the outside a freshly reformed museum, I believe I can compare the two models and highlight the positive and negative aspects of both of them. However, this comparison underlines possible common obstacles that should not be taken for granted, obstacles caused by the lack of expert staff when it comes to defining the layout of the museum (economic, governance, organogram) and by the scarce clarity of the main aims of an itinerary that will be unavoidably long but compulsory.

Type specimens of Neotropical Chrysopidae (Neuroptera) in Italian museums

Type specimens of Neotropical Chrysopidae are currently held in two Italian natural history museums. Four are in the Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali (MRSN), Torino, and five are in the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale “Giacomo Doria” (MSNG), Genova. Together, these nine specimens also represent all of the known New World types of Chrysopidae housed in Italian museums. All were described by Longinos Navas between 1922 and 1932, and all are now in relatively good condition. Here, we catalog and provide images of each specimen, designate lectotypes, and offer current taxonomic and nomenclatural information on the species represented by each. Two nomenclatural changes are proposed: (1) Chrysopa mainerii Navas, 1929, previously considered incertae sedis, is synonymized with Ceraeochrysa everes (Banks, 1920), n. syn.; (2) Chrysopa barberina Navas, 1932, also previously incertae sedis, is identified as Chrysoperla barberina (Navas, 1932), n. comb.

Roman History

Identity studies live. This latest batch of publications explores what made not just the Romans but the Italians, Christians, and Etruscans who they were. We begin with both age and beauty, the fruits of a special exhibition at the Badischen Landesmuseum Karlsruhe in the first half of 2018 into the most famous of Roman predecessors, the Etruscans. Most of the exhibits on display come from Italian museums, but the interpretative essays that break up the catalogue – which are also richly illustrated – are by both Italian and German scholars. These are split between five overarching sections covering introductory affairs, the ages of the princes and of the city-states, the Etruscans’ relationship with Rome, and modern reception. The first contains essays treating Etruscan origins, history, identity, and settlement area. The second begins with the early Iron Age Villanova site, before turning to early Etruscan aristocratic culture, including banqueting, burials, language, writing, and seafaring. The third and longest section considers the heyday of Etruscan civilization and covers engineering and infrastructure, crafts and production, munitions, women's roles, daily life, dance, sport, funerary culture, wall painting, religious culture, and art. The fourth section treats both the confrontation between Etruscan and Roman culture and the persistence of the former after ‘conquest’ by the latter. The fifth section contains one essay on the modern inheritance of the Etruscan ‘myth’ and one on the history of scholarship on the Etruscans. Three aspects to this volume deserve particular praise. First, it includes not only a huge range of material artefacts but also individual essays on Etruscan production in gold, ceramic, ivory, terracotta, and bronze. Second, there is a recurring interest in the interconnections between the Etruscans and other cultures, not just Romans but Greeks, Iberians, Celts, Carthaginians, and other Italian peoples. Third, it includes the history of the reception of Etruscan culture. Amid the just-shy-of-200 objects included (almost every one with description and high-quality colour image), the reader can find everything from a mid-seventh-century pitcher made from an Egyptian ostrich egg painted with birds, flowers, and dancers (147), through the well-known third- or second-century bcTabula Cortonensis – a lengthy and only partially deciphered Etruscan inscription that documents either a legal transaction or a funerary ceremony (311) – to the 2017 kit of the Etruschi Livorno American Football team (364). Since we have no extant Etruscan literature, a volume such as this is all the more valuable in trying to get a sense of these people and their culture, and the exceptionally high production value provides quality exposure to material otherwise scattered throughout Italy.

From ‘listener’ to ‘speaker’ museum visitors: guest book as a means of dialogue

ABSTRACTMuseum visitor studies acknowledge guest books as a potential source of information and a means of dialogue both among visitors and between visitors and museum staff. Nevertheless, the guest book is still under-used in the Italian museum context. Assuming this gap, this study aims at enlarging the understanding of that audience development method by an exploratory case study. More specifically, the guest book related to the main temporary exhibition, managed by an Italian Civic Museum in Lombardy, has been carried out through sentiment analysis. Findings introduce the taxonomy of ‘non-active’, ‘pre-active’, ‘active’ and ‘pro-active’ users, with the last two categories representing dialogue and visitor engagement in the museum evaluation process. Additional research paths on the correlation between the guest book form and the active users’ attitude are suggested. The case study also encourages more investigation on accountability and reporting within museum discourse.

Robust microclimate control for artwork preservation in response to extreme climatic conditions: simulation of museum halls for temporary exhibitions with a validated dynamic tool

In museums, artworks preservation is hampered by several factors, in particular temperature and relative humidity as inappropriate values of these parameters can cause biological, mechanical, and chemical degradation. Thus, HVAC systems must be able to maintain specific suitable indoor microclimate also in critical conditions, such as variation of external climate and huge presence of visitors. In this paper, we first present the results of a monitoring campaign conducted in some rooms of an Italian museum in the 2015-2016 winter exhibition. The current HVAC system was able to maintain the required microclimate. A dynamic model (using TRNSYS for the envelope modeling and an in-house developed tool for the HVAC system) has been validated through the measured data. The dynamic model allows performing additional simulations characterized by critical boundary conditions (e.g., low external temperature and/or high relative humidity, and high number of visitors). In current conditions, these conditions would have caused unacceptable microclimate in the exhibition rooms, meaning higher risks for artworks. Through a rational rearrangement of the current HVAC system (both generators and terminal units), the microclimate was found to be suitable also in critical situations. This outcome is particularly important in exhibition rooms with temporarily borrowed artworks, since climatic conditions are basically unpredictable for the season of exhibition and so a robust HVAC system is needed.

REPLICAS IN CULTURAL HERITAGE: 3D PRINTING AND THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCE

Abstract. 3D printing has seen a recent massive diffusion for several applications, not least the field of Cultural Heritage. Being used for different purposes, such as study, analysis, conservation or access in museum exhibitions, 3D printed replicas need to undergo a process of validation also in terms of metrical precision and accuracy. The Laboratory of Photogrammetry of Iuav University of Venice has started several collaborations with Italian museum institutions firstly for the digital acquisition and then for the physical reproduction of objects of historical and artistic interest. The aim of the research is to analyse the metric characteristics of the printed model in relation to the original data, and to optimize the process that from the survey leads to the physical representation of an object. In fact, this could be acquired through different methodologies that have different precisions (multi-image photogrammetry, TOF laser scanner, triangulation based laser scanner), and it always involves a long processing phase. It should not be forgotten that the digital data have to undergo a series of simplifications, which, on one hand, eliminate the noise introduced by the acquisition process, but on the other one, they can lead to discrepancies between the physical copy and the original geometry. In this paper we will show the results obtained on a small archaeological find that was acquired and reproduced for a museum exhibition intended for blind and partially sighted people.

Multi-objective optimization of microclimate in museums for concurrent reduction of energy needs, visitors’ discomfort and artwork preservation risks

In museums, hygrothermal conditions must be carefully controlled by HVAC system to avoid artwork degradation. Higher energy requirements are needed for the maintenance of the suitable thermal environment. Moreover, a comfortable thermal sensation is needed for a positive museum experience. In light of current policies on energy efficiency, we propose an original procedure for the concurrent achievement of three goals: artwork preservation, energy efficiency, and human thermal comfort. This procedure is based on the application of multi-objective optimization and aims at correctly choosing temperature and relative humidity setpoints, through the use of dynamic simulations and evaluation of three indexes as objectives. This strategy can be particularly effective in museums hosted in historic buildings, where envelope and HVAC refurbishment is often forbidden or discouraged due to the architectural constraints. Furthermore, the retrofit action is almost costless. A case study is presented: first, a monitoring campaign in an Italian museum has been used for the validation of dynamic simulation models of the building-HVAC system; then, the validated models have been used to show that improvements of artwork lifetime, human thermal comfort and reduction of energy requirements of the HVAC system are possible, if currently-used hygrothermal setpoints (based on technical standards and guidelines) are replaced with those identified by the optimization problem.

Ownership, organization structure and public service provision: the case of museums

This article provides an empirical investigation of the effects of the ownership and organizational structure on the performance of cultural institutions. More specifically, we consider how museums are effective in their function of disseminating culture to audiences and contributing to the local development. By exploiting a unique data set based on the 2011 census of Italian museums, we develop performance indices of accessibility, visitors’ experience, web visibility and promotion of the local cultural context. Using count data models, we regress such measures on the type of organization. We distinguish between governmental museums, public museums whose administration is either outsourced or has financial autonomy and private museums. We control for the most salient characteristics of a museum, competition pressure and some proxies of potential audience. Our evidence shows that private museums, public museums with financial autonomy and outsourced museums outperform public museums run as sub-units of culture departments. This paper contributes to the cultural economics and public policy and administration literature by adding insights into the effect of outsourcing and administrative decentralization in the public cultural sector.

Web Strategy in Museums: An Italian Survey Stimulates New Visions

Museums must adapt to the increasingly massive use of the Internet, and use it to reach new audiences and find new ways of enhancing culture, or consolidate the relationship with their existing public. Therefore, defining an online strategy that conforms to the museum's mission may prove difficult. One of the challenges cultural organisations face in this regard is how to define, measure and evaluate their efficiency and approach.In the present article, we will study the digital instruments adopted by Italian museums to communicate on and promote their heritage collections on the web, and enhance the involvement and participation of audiences in the digital environment. Our aim is to present and discuss the results of the first online web strategy survey conducted in 2017, by Italy and the Italian Ministry of Culture (Mi). The survey and its findings show that Italian museums have risen to the challenge, by working on defining and developing their digital web strategy. The conclusion will highlight the gaps and some points for future reflection with a focus on open data. We hope that a wider museum community can adopt our monitoring tool, the 17 web strategy parameters, and share results.

Polvere di stelle The Italian platform for data-sharing and data-preserving of modern and ancient astronomical resources

Polvere di stelle(Stardust) is the web portal of the National Institute for Astrophysics(INAF) dedicated to the Italian astronomical libraries, archives and museums. It offers different tools and databases created to support astronomical research and increase the value of one of the richest astronomical heritages in the world.In a single virtual space one can find useful tools for sharing digital resources and other services for current research. Besides the OPAC, consisting of bibliographic data of ancientand modern books and serials, the portal offers to astronomers, scholars, students, amateur astronomers and historians of science the possibility to search at the same time other databases: manuscripts, instruments, archival documents and biographies of astronomers. Furthermore, a digital showcase of rare books plays a relevant role in the portal.This paper illustrates the ongoing developments and perspectives ofPolvere di stelle.

Isomorphic and decoupling processes: An empirical analysis of governance in Italian state museums

Purpose of the paper : This study, which adopts a situationist perspective, analyzes the governance dynamics of Italian museum organizations. It focuses on the role played by the actors involved in the governance practices of the national artistic-cultural heritage, the institutional pressures brought to bear on the conduct of museum directors, and the initiation of isomorphic and decoupling processes by the actors. Methodology : We conducted field research to verify the presence of isomorphic and decoupling processes in the strategic behavior of directors who are responsible for Italian state museums. To this end, we developed descriptive, cluster, and cross-tabulation analyses. Findings : The field research first detected a widespread emphasis on the protection of artistic-cultural heritage. Secondly, it revealed a tendency for museum directors to adopt isomorphic and decoupling strategies. Research limits. Although the situationist perspective enabled a more realistic representation of the phenomenon, it did not provide a set of prescriptive, ready-to-use governance practices. Practical implications : These new insights into the governance of museums from the situationist perspective should stimulate the sector’s actors to review the use of predictive models and to acquire the skills needed to understand the competitive nature of institutional environments. The study should also show the way for further studies on the role of directors and a wider understanding of this topic. Originality of the paper This study gives the reader the opportunity to recognize isomorphic and/or decoupling processes as the inevitable result of a fragmented regulatory framework.

How universities institutionalize ‘good’ managerial practices? Some evidence on the Italian cultural sector

Purpose of the paper : This study aims to analyze the role of Italian universities in the ‘managerialization’ process of the cultural heritage sector, which is under a major process of change, merged in the recent reform of the Italian museums’ system. Methodology : This work adopts the new-institutionalism perspective to draw a quali-quantitative analysis of the offer of masters in Management (at both first and second level) of the Italian Universities. In particular, it presents a content analysis of the most recurrent profiles of masters activated by Italian Universities that are consistent with the issues of the cultural heritage sector. Findings : The main finding of the research is the presence of ‘window dressing’ in which the real contents of the master are not contextualized in the cultural sector. Research limits : This work gives only the results of a first step of analysis. The group wishes for an extended time of work aimed at developing a longitudinal analysis of processes of formation. Practical implications : This study, by bringing out the close interconnections between universities and the cultural heritage sector, reveals the necessity of a partnership that makes more coherent the educational path and the demands of the cultural sector. Originality of the pape r: This study presents a content analysis on the most recurrent profiles of masters activated by Italian Universities that are consistent with the issues of the cultural heritage sector, in order to observe the presence of “normative isomorphism”.