La Rinascita Firenze per Monsignor Timothy Verdon, direttore artistico del Museo dell'Opera del Duomo e Canonico della Cattedrale

Comunicheremo e approfondiremo di più: abbiamo compreso l'importanza della cultura e il senso della fede

An exclusive interview with Monsignor Timothy Verdon, artistic director of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, on the day of the reopening of the Duomo monuments in Florence. The Cathedral, Baptistery, Giotto's Bell Tower and the Opera Museum can be visited free of charge from Friday 22 May until the end of the month, with online booking required.

The Dome will be visible from 18 June for the completion of work on the lighting system. The opening has been anticipated by the presentation of the device that allows to respect the safety distances between visitors in the monumental complex of the Duomo of Florence.

The first to use it in museums around the world, the small size system created by the Italian company AME (Advanced MicrowaveEngineering), based in Florence, will be provided free of charge to tourists. Once worn, it signals with a sound, vibrating and illuminating, that the minimum allowed distance has been exceeded. At the end of the visit, the device will be returned and sanitized for reuse. The system is anonymous and does not track movements and data.

The Covid-19 is taking us on a new course, in which we are experiencing a social and economic emergency, great changes in everyday life, but also a rediscovery of human values. How do you see this new world that is appearing?
The shared planetary experience of silence, solitude and suffering has made people more reflective, more open to others, more fascinated by the stories of courage, hope and love that many works in our museums tell. We cultural heritage managers must come to meet this process of awareness, helping those who come to visit us to rediscover the relationship between creativity and humanity. Even masterpieces are born in silence, in solitude and - often - as an expression of intimate suffering.

If this is the present, what will the near future look like?
I am not a prophet and therefore I cannot give an exact answer. But it is difficult to imagine that before autumn we will be able to get out of the tangle of restrictive rules and the pervasive climate of fear that we have been going through in recent months. The people who will come to the Museo dell'Opera as to other museums will be primarily Italian. For Opera it has been complicated to organize the reopening of the monuments - Duomo, Baptistery, Dome and Bell Tower and Museum, but it is crucial, both because the sense of the museum is inseparable from that of these ancient temples, and because the accessibility of the churches is an even more eloquent sign than that of the museums.

This pandemic has brought with it a real digital revolution, a step forward that now belongs to us. According to her, the way to enjoy art, culture and perhaps even faith has also changed.....
Absolutely, and the Opera Museum is also moving into the new digital world. Visiting the works of art in a virtual way has educated many people to spend more time with the works, to look at the details highlighted on the screen, to listen to the explanations offered by experts. So Covid 19 gives us a new curiosity, a desire to know better, a more patient and more demanding look. At the same time, however, the distance from the original works also creates the desire to return to the museum and the church to stop in front of the masterpieces. There is also a change in the faith: the obligatory fasting of these months has created a real hunger to find the great signs, especially the Sunday assembly in which believers contemplate the Mystical Body of the Saviour, and then his sacramental body, the Eucharist. The deprivation of these signs has allowed people to stand up against their importance.

A longer-term vision: what are the difficulties and opportunities you see for culture in the coming years?
The difficulties will be above all practical: problems of fruition due to limits on transfers, problems of deepening due to the recessive economy which will not allow the exhibitions, conferences, other expensive forms of education to which we have become accustomed. But perhaps more important are the opportunities that will arise from this situation: a new willingness to seek in the arts the spiritual and not only aesthetic meanings that inspired them, and the stimulus to communicate, even by simple means like the videos we see online these days, the human message of our masterpieces. The Renaissance, of which Florence is so proud, was this: communication of the values that make us human.