Italian culture. A new patron, please

Date: 15/10/05

Private sponsorship may be the only hope for cash-starved culture

EVEN for strike-hardened Italians, there is an element of novelty in the stoppage which has been called for October 14th. Theatres, cinemas and opera houses are to close in protest at what an actress, Mariangela Melato, has called a "disaster for all of us and the whole of Italian culture".

As details of Italy's 2006 budget have trickled out, it has become clear the arts have again been singled out as the prime target for spending cuts. Last year, the cuts were painful enough to elicit a threat of resignation--never actually carried out--from the then culture minister. This year, they go even deeper.

The bill drawn up by Giulio Tremonti, who returned to his old job as finance minister after his predecessor quit last month, would shrink the main kitty for the performing arts, known by its acronym as the FUS, by about a third. Among internationally renowned institutions affected are the great Milan and Venice opera houses, La Scala and La Fenice; Milan's Piccolo Teatro; and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

None of these mighty centres of excellence is funded solely from the FUS. La Scala, for example, gets lottery money. But the budget also forces big cuts on the regional, provincial and local authorities that supply roughly half of the funding for culture in Italy.

Massimo Cacciari, mayor of Venice and president of La Fenice, said he would be left with "only the money to pay the staff". Bad news for opera lovers. But should they expect their passion to be bankrolled by other taxpayers?

Definitely, says Severino Salvemini, who lectures on cultural economics at Milan's Bocconi University. "For Italians, investment in culture is almost a productive investment," he says. "The more we become a society whose output relies on aesthetics, the more culture becomes a contribution to competitiveness."

Perhaps, replies Eleonora Belfiore, of the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at Britain's Warwick University. "All sorts of claims are made for the economic value of culture," she notes. "But whenever economists have studied these claims, they have found there is very little hard evidence to support them."

However, she agrees with Professor Salvemini on one thing: while cutting off public money to the arts, Silvio Berlusconi's government has done too little to ensure the funds are replaced with private largesse. After four years of conservative government, individuals still cannot set patronage of the arts against their tax liability, and the fiscal incentives for corporations are more theoretical than real.

According to the Council of Europe, there is proportionately less private cultural sponsorship in Italy than in Germany or Britain, though more than in France. Much of this private money goes on heritage conservation, and what is left cannot be increased overnight to make good cuts of about 30%. But to be true to its own principles, the right-wing government could at least make a start. This would show how much individual and corporate generosity, properly harnessed, can benefit the arts--in a country whose heritage owes so much to patrons with deep pockets.

Private sponsorship may be the only hope for the cash-starved culture sector in Italy, as public funding is cut back.