Italy’s culture minister has announced a €25 million grant to enable the completion of the national Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah (MEIS), under development in Ferrara.
The grant is part of a €1 billion package of state grants, announced Monday (May 2), for 33 cultural heritage sites and projects around the country — ranging from the ancient Roman ruins at Pompeii to palaces, churches, museums and more.
Culture and Tourism Minister Dario Franceschini said the grants are are all for “precise interventions and all for grand entities that in recent years had remained uncompleted or shelved.”
He called the grants “the biggest operation on cultural heritage in the history of the republic.”
MEIS was formally established by a law in 2003 (which was modified in 2006). Its site is the architectural complex of a former Ferrara prison, built in 1912 and decommissioned in 1992.
Work on the project has progressed slowly, with only a fraction of the building open and no complete core exhibit installed.
In recent months, work has been consolidated, with the naming of Dario Disegni as president of the museums’ foundation and — last month — Simonetta della Seta as the museum’s new director.
At the time of della Seta’s appointment, Disegni said the first part of the museum will be opened in Autumn 2017, with the installation of a first major exhibition in the restructured central part of the building.