Autonomy, decision making and control in public cultural institutions: stuck in the middle? Within the art sector, management tends often to be reduced to a question of communication and fund raising. On the contrary, it is here argued, Italian cultural institutions' mayor problems are those...

The Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence (Masonry Workshop) is of ancient lineage, dating back to the Botteghe Granducali set up in 1588 by the Medici Grand Duke Ferdinand I. In the 1880's, after the Unification of Italy, it was turned into a restoration workshop (a discipline, at that time,...