You call attention to the crisis in Italy's natural history museums — in funding, personnel and administration, as well as in their visibility, research and purpose (Nature 515, 311–312; 2014). There is a way to prevent the long-term management of these scientific collections from deteriorating into an elitist hobby.
The Italian education and heritage ministries should together facilitate a functional and administrative connection between the country's smaller natural history museums. Such a 'meta-museum' could coordinate long-term goals and scientific activities, enabling facilities and budgetary and technical resources to be shared — as in Germany's Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt and Leibniz Association in Berlin. The largest of the museums could stay as independent scientific institutions, similar to London's Natural History Museum and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
To strengthen their scientific influence, these museums must participate in survey work and field research that contributes to the discovery, conservation and promulgation of national and global biodiversity.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
(PDF 405 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Andreone, F. Natural history: save Italy's museums. Nature 517, 271 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/517271b
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/517271b
This article is cited by
-
Natural History Collections and Alien Species: an Overlooked Sample of Bursatella leachii Blainville, 1817 (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Aplysiida) Backdates its Confirmed Presence in Italy
Thalassas: An International Journal of Marine Sciences (2019)