Eike Schmidt stands by his choices without any regrets. At 57 years old, Schmidt has spent the last decade establishing himself as one of the world's most visible and unpredictable museum directors. His career has been marked by surprising decisions that have consistently made headlines well beyond the specialized world of European art institutions.
Schmidt's journey began when he took control of Florence's renowned Uffizi Galleries in 2015, completely restructuring the historic institution. Originally, he planned to leave his post in 2019 to become director of Vienna's prestigious Kunsthistorisches Museum. However, in a last-minute change of heart, he decided to remain at the Uffizi. Then in 2024, just months after accepting a new position as director of the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, the German-born Schmidt made another unexpected move by running for mayor of Florence. He only settled into his new museum role after losing the mayoral election.
These controversial decisions have generated significant media attention far beyond the traditionally quiet world of Europe's historic art collections. Schmidt approaches these controversies with remarkable composure, choosing instead to focus on the future of his current institution – southern Italy's premier Old Masters collection, located in a region facing numerous challenges.
Born into a professional family in Freiburg im Breisgau in southwest Germany, Schmidt has been connected to Italy since the mid-1990s. He is married to Italian art historian Roberta Bartoli and obtained Italian citizenship in the period leading up to his mayoral campaign. Looking back, he now views his 2019 decision to withdraw from the Vienna directorship as absolutely the right choice. At the time, he cited his deep connection with Florence as the primary reason.
"As it worked out," Schmidt explains, "I would have started a few months before the Covid-19 pandemic, imperiling the Kunsthistorisches Museum through my lack of insider experience there, and leaving the Uffizi without a knowledgeable director to handle the crisis back in Florence." Matti Bunzl, who has served as director of the Wien Museum since 2015, remembers the episode as unusual, though he stops short of calling it a scandal.
Five years later, when Schmidt decided to run for mayor of Florence, friends and colleagues were puzzled by his choice. "I was surprised," says Tom Rassieur, a longtime friend and curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA), where Schmidt previously worked as a sculpture and decorative arts curator and department head before joining the Uffizi. Schmidt describes being "drafted" by Florentines who would approach him on the street to praise his management abilities.
Schmidt ran as a center-right independent candidate but received backing from right-wing and far-right political factions, including Brothers of Italy (Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's populist party) and Lega (associated with Eurosceptic leader Matteo Salvini). While he advanced to the runoff election, he ultimately lost to center-left politician Sara Funaro. "I would not do anything differently," Schmidt states now, expressing pride in his better-than-expected electoral performance.
Schmidt's academic background centers on Renaissance sculpture, with particular expertise in ivory works. He briefly interrupted his scholarly and curatorial career with a year-long venture into the art market, serving as director of European sculpture at Sotheby's London before moving to Minneapolis in 2009. His transition from the Minneapolis Institute of Art – a respected but regional museum – to directing the world-renowned Uffizi remains a remarkable career leap.
Schmidt's 2015 appointment to the Uffizi, along with several other non-Italian directors appointed to key museum positions, represented a dramatic shift in how Italy's national museums were administered. The then center-left government was attempting to reform what many viewed as stagnant cultural institutions.
From the beginning, Schmidt's tenure at the Uffizi was characterized by exceptional organizational skills. Shortly after his arrival, he merged the original Uffizi building and its incredible collection of Renaissance masterpieces with the massive Palazzo Pitti located across the Arno River. Previously, the Palazzo Pitti had housed nine separate collections. The newly configured Uffizi Galleries also incorporated the adjacent Boboli Gardens and the famous Vasari Corridor, which connects the Uffizi to the Palazzo Pitti by winding across the historic Ponte Vecchio.
Financially, Schmidt's leadership proved tremendously successful. "When I arrived, the Uffizi made half its operating costs," he explains. "When I left, we made double." Both supporters and critics acknowledge that attendance figures soared during his tenure. The Uffizi Galleries now welcomes more than 5.2 million visitors annually – nearly double the 2019 numbers. Between 2014 and 2024, attendance at the main Uffizi building increased from just under two million to nearly three million visitors.
Within the Uffizi Gallery itself, Schmidt supervised the rehanging and selective but dramatic reframing of much of the collection. Michelangelo's only panel painting, the Doni Tondo (1505-06), and Botticelli's La Primavera (around 1480), along with works by Leonardo da Vinci, are now displayed in recessed wall spaces behind anti-reflective glass. Much of the permanent collection was reorganized and grouped in innovative ways.
Reactions to these changes have been decidedly mixed among art historians and critics. American art historian and critic Cammy Brothers believes the effect has been to draw excessive attention to certain marquee pieces, "resulting in a decontextualization as opposed to an understanding." However, Bruce Edelstein, a Florence-based American art historian who, like Brothers, has been visiting the Uffizi regularly for decades, appreciates the new arrangements. "Those displays have enormously improved the ability of larger crowds to view works of art," he says. "Eike Schmidt brought the museum [Uffizi Gallery] into the 21st century."
To attract more attention and visitors to the Uffizi, Schmidt invested significantly in relaunching the museum's website, brought in social media influencers, and even posed for some humorous publicity photographs himself. While Edelstein maintains that Schmidt successfully modernized the museum for the contemporary era, Brothers expresses concern that the museum has become overcrowded.
One of Schmidt's most vocal critics is Florentine art historian Tomaso Montanari, who was himself proposed by the press as a potential center-left mayoral candidate. Montanari strongly criticizes Schmidt's use of social media influencers and what he describes as "a certain franchising of the Uffizi brand – something that would make sense in the US, not in Tuscany."
Montanari, now a professor and rector at Università per Stranieri di Siena, also disapproves of Schmidt's emphasis on blockbuster exhibitions, which he believes came at the expense of deeper research into the museum's collections. However, curator Carl Strehlke, another American resident of Florence, offers enthusiastic praise for what he considers an often undervalued aspect of Schmidt's tenure: acquiring new works for the collection. "His acquisitions for the Uffizi were very important," Strehlke explains, citing works by artists including the Trecento Florentine painter Giovanni da Milano and Romantic artist Francesco Hayez.
Schmidt's move from Florence to chaotic Naples – a short train ride but seemingly worlds away from orderly, picturesque Florence – is less surprising than it initially appears. He had actually applied for the Capodimonte position in 2015, at the same time he applied for the Uffizi directorship, and he considers his current position the fulfillment of a long-held dream. However, he has arrived during a particularly challenging time for Naples' cultural scene, with many important museums chronically lacking permanent leadership.
The Museo di Capodimonte, like the Uffizi, houses a collection spanning from the Middle Ages to the present day. Unlike the Uffizi, however, it remains what Schmidt describes as an undiscovered treasure. Though unquestionably one of Italy's most important museums – featuring significant works by artists as diverse as Simone Martini, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Titian, Caravaggio, and Andy Warhol – it attracts only a fraction of the crowds that visit Florence. Last year, the museum welcomed just under 160,000 visitors.
The museum building, once the grand hunting residence of Naples' Bourbon kings, is surrounded by an expansive park popular with local residents, giving it the appearance of an architectural curiosity rather than a major cultural attraction. "This is one of the greatest art collections of the world, but hardly anyone knows about it," Schmidt observes. "Not even in Naples."
At the Museo di Capodimonte, Schmidt has already begun making his mark. In an upgraded second-floor gallery, he has assembled approximately 20 highlights from the collection, including Titian's magnificent portrait of Pope Paul III and Artemisia Gentileschi's powerful Judith Slaying Holofernes (around 1620). In a provocative curatorial decision, he has displayed these historic masterpieces alongside Andy Warhol's Vesuvius (1985).
While increasing visitor numbers is part of Schmidt's strategy to boost revenue – currently a mere 5% of operating costs, according to him – his primary goal is to completely reimagine how the collection is presented and understood. His plans include bringing overlooked works by women artists out of storage, developing new approaches to highlight underappreciated Neapolitan Baroque painters, acquiring additional works, and expanding educational outreach to schoolchildren throughout Naples and the surrounding Campania region.
For now, Schmidt appears less interested in attracting the city's pizza-focused tourists, who rarely venture up the hill to Capodimonte from Naples' historic center, or in recruiting a new wave of social media influencers to promote the museum. His tenure in Naples may therefore be more low-key compared to his celebrity-filled years in Florence, though he does have one notable exception in mind: Italy's top-ranked tennis player and recent Wimbledon champion Jannik Sinner, who has a substantial youth following in the country. "He resonates with the kids," Schmidt explains, suggesting that Sinner's appeal could help connect younger audiences with the museum's extraordinary collection.
