Italy row over museum director fuels debate over Meloni's grip on culture

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni holds her end-of-year news conference in Rome, Italy, December 29, 2022. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane//File Photo

By Federico Maccioni

MILAN (Reuters) - A row between the head of a prestigious museum in Turin and politicians from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's right-wing coalition has inflamed a debate over whether the government is seeking an undue grip over culture.

Christian Greco has run the Egyptian Museum in the northern Italian city since 2014, presiding over a marked increase in ticket sales, with more than 900,000 people visiting the site in 2022, up 6.3% from pre-pandemic levels.

However, Greco came under fire from right-wing parties in 2018 when he launched a promotion offering price reductions for Arabic speakers in recognition of the fact that the museum's collection came from Egypt -- the largest Arab nation.

Meloni's Brothers of Italy party and its ally the League said the price cut discriminated against Italians and since taking power following elections last year, they have returned to the charge.

"He is a left-wing director who has run the Egyptian Museum in Turin in an ideological and racist manner against Italians and Christian citizens," the deputy head of the League, Andrea Crippa, told Affaritaliani.it website this week.

In interviews with several newspapers on Thursday, Greco defended his record and said Italian politicians, unlike their peers abroad, tried to meddle with technical decisions concerning how museums are run and how their heads are selected.

"In seven years working abroad ... I never met a politician," he told daily La Stampa, in apparent reference to his time working in the Netherlands.

Meloni's coalition, which came to power last October, has been pushing a nationalist agenda that includes legislation against the use of foreign words in official documents.

While Greco is an Italian citizen, previous centre-left governments appointed high-profile foreigners to run a few of the country's most famous sites, including Florence's Uffizi Gallery, Pompeii and Milan's Pinacoteca di Brera.

Vittorio Sgarbi, the undersecretary of culture, said last month that some top arts jobs should only go to Italians and the government has introduced new criteria for the selection process, including more demanding language requirements.

Greco said he was confident there would be transparency around future appointments, but said Italian politicians needed to stop interfering.

"In Italy, political interference is excessive, it ruins certain equilibriums and is a problem that has always existed," he told La Stampa.