Italy spreading museum artworks around all Tuscany to prevent overtourism

Dhaka: Italy, in a bid to prevent overtourism once it opens its door to tourists, is taking steps to turn the region of Tuscany into one giant gallery.

The Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy's most visited museum, and home to many of the world's greatest collections of Renaissance art have launched its Uffizi Diffuse, or "Scattered Uffizi" project, which will see works of art taken from the gallery and displayed around the wider region of Tuscany.

Up to 100 regional galleries will be created in the next five years, in an effort to put a halt to the overtourism that has plagued Florence in recent years.

Artworks will be re-homed in small towns and villages, in a move to spread tourists and their spending, as well as their impact on the environment around the region, instead of centering them around the Florence honeypot.

The future will see ancient palazzos, convents and crumbling turn-of-century spas converted into permanent exhibition spaces, but the project is launching this summer with five temporary exhibitions to be held in the area surrounding Florence.

Director of the Uffizi Galleries Eike Schmidt said, "You don't look at a work of art in isolation; you see it on a screen, in a book, or in a museum. The bodily context and landscape context matter a lot, and this will give the opportunity to perceive these artworks in a very different manner. To see a work by Andrea del Castagno in the landscape where Andrea del Castagno came from – I think that's worth a trip from California, Warsaw, Australia, or Barcelona."

He termed the launch project a "magical mystery tour" of northern Tuscany. The towns are drawing upcycle and driving routes between them, to create mini art trails.

Schmidt said, "The reason for doing this project now is that we need to transform tourism into something more ecologically and socially sustainable – and one that will be more fun, too. And that means the decongestion of hotspots such as Florence, by spreading the visitors around.”

"That means fostering a unity of landscape tourism, family tourism, food tourism, sports tourism, and cultural and arts tourism.”

 

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