Italian cultural heritage is all about systems. Or rather, professionals in Italy (and politicians) who work in culture and heritage and museums etc often refer to a national system of cultural heritage. My own post-grad course of studies (completed in Milan more years ago than I care to remember) turned me into (I kid you not) a "strategic planner of integrated cultural systems"... and I confess I have spent the last 18 years of my life striving to reach the heady heights of the job description.
In no way, however, does Italy seem to support a cultural system. I take this word to indicate a group of interacting, interrelated or interdependent elements, or elements that are functionally related, and form a complex whole. From my point of view, at the heart of any cultural system is the visitor, who experiences heritage, ultimately becomes its patron and protector, funds it and - most importantly - gives it meaning. Many visitors to Italy's incredible cultural sites are not seen in this way - mostly, they are overwhelmed (see above).
The word 'system' in Italy often refers to the country itself: the sistema-paese, describing the whole country as if it were a seamless, well-oiled engine that works across everything: political thinking, financial planning, infrastructure, education, culture... I shall let this lie for the moment since anyone who is abreast of current affairs or has ever lived in Italy for a short time can testify that the more Italians speak about systems the least systemic and organised is the blob they are referring to.
Sometimes the word system is used to indicate a set of disparate things which Italians naively consider become a single entity once they are referred to in the collective.
So while Italy as a whole is referred to (in cultural terms) as a single, continuous, open-air, diffuse museum system (sistema museale diffuso), in actual fact it is not physically possible to visit any attraction in Italy that is in any way connected to another, either thematically or functionally; nor are heritage sites grouped together because of their management structures or operational models; nor can you book tickets to attractions that belong to the same municipality or are state-owned via a single website; nor can you find out about all of - say - Milan's cultural attractions on one portal. How can we honestly consider Italian cultural heritage to be a system?
The PIXAR mouse - Copyright PIXAR - expresses my frustration (-;
