Italy is on the hunt for 20 new directors to be installed in the country’s leading museums including Rome’s Galleria Borghese, Florence’s Gallerie degli Uffizi and Napoli’s Museo di Capodimonte, as part of a shakeup of the country’s entire museum sector.

With a deadline of 15 February, the new directors will provide strategic leadership and management expertise for the selected museums. Each director will lead his or her respective administrative board and scientific committee.

Under the government’s current system, Italy’s Culture Ministry manages the country’s museums and directors previously had little creative freedom or control. The new change in direction is designed to bring Italy’s top museums in line with the likes of France’s Louvre and Spain’s Museo Nacional del Prado. The shakeup in policy also seeks to give directors a larger influence over annual budgets and allow easier methods of raising private income in the face of drastic funding cuts.

“It’s a giant leap ahead,” said Italy’s culture minister, Dario Franceschini, speaking on the change in policy. “Italian museums should be more dynamic. They should have more bookshops, more restaurants. They should be attractive and have more multimedia.”

According to the Culture Ministry, in 2014 the country’s museums attracted more than 40 million visitors and generated €135m (US$156.2m, £103.4m) in revenue. Beyond changes in the top 20 museums, thousands of other Italian museums would be reorganised into regional clusters, where a combined ticket would encourage people to visit multiple museums.

The new directors are expected to be in place by Q3 of 2015 and would serve four-year terms before the positions reopen. Current museum directors at those institutions will have to reapply for their jobs.

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