Wanted: culture czar to dust off Italy's museums

By Stephen Brown

ROME (Reuters) - As museum jobs go, it's a whopper: Italy seeks a chief curator to run all the museums in a country that boasts more masterpieces and archaeological treasures than anywhere else in the world, but fails to exploit them properly.

Italy has about 1,500 museums and is home to more UNESCO-listed World Heritage Sites than any other country.

The headhunter for the new position of Director General of Italian Museums is Culture Minister Sandro Bondi, who has opened up the contest to Italians and foreigners.

"This person will be at the heart of a major project to look after, and add value to, Italy's museums by ensuring they get the proper resources, both public and private," Bondi told Reuters in an interview carried out by email.

The job is part of a drive to halt the decay of some of the icons of Italy's heritage -- notoriously, the ancient Roman town of Pompeii, one of Italy's top tourist attractions, which was frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

The government has declared a "state of emergency" at Pompeii and appointed a special commissioner, "to show that we will not stand by idly while faced with the decay of one of the most important archaeological areas in the world", Bondi said.

Once Pompeii is returned its former -- well, ruin -- he will hand its management as a tourist attraction to a private firm.

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