ROME Like elsewhere in Europe, museums and art galleries closed in Italy in the spring and again in the fall to contain the spread of COVID-19, leaving virtual tours as the best option for art lovers who wanted to see the treasures held by institutions such as the Uffizi Galleries in Florence and the Vatican Museums in Rome.
But some exquisite pieces of Italy's cultural heritage remain on display for in-person viewing inside the country's churches, which stayed open during the autumn resurgence of the virus. Some churches hold collections of Renaissance art and iconography that would be the envy of any museum.
Residents of Rome and, in a normal year, tourists can admire masterpieces by Michelangelo and Caravaggio
Alex Kitnick on the discontent with museums
Caravaggio,
The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, 1602, oil on canvas, 9 8 1/2 x 6 2 1/2 .
“WHEN DISCONTENT WITH MUSEUMS is strong enough to provoke the attempt to exhibit paintings in their original surroundings or in ones similar, in baroque or rococo castles, for instance, the result is even more distressing than when the works are wrenched from their original surroundings and then brought together.” This is Theodor Adorno in his great essay “Valéry Proust Museum,” first published in German in 1955, a moment of reckoning and reconstruction. Though Adorno doesn’t specify why the attempt to return and repatriate is more upsetting than the original rift and reassembling of modernity, it is clear that we are in a similar moment of discontent again today and that we, too, must consider our desires and the effects they might produce.