Visit – Musei Civici Reggio Emilia

Reggio Emilia, Office of Musei Civici, piazza Casotti, 1
22 July 2014
Meeting 11 am to 2 pm. Visit to the Museum 3 pm to 4 pm
SmartArt: Paolo Mazzanti, Roberto Caldelli
@Diversity Coaches: Margherita Sani, Ludovico Solima
Staff of Musei Civici: Elisabetta Farioli (director), Georgia Cantoni (curator), Alessandro Gazzotti (curator), Maria Montanari(curator)

The meeting was organised to explore the possibility of testing the SmartArt technology in a museum. The Musei Civici of Reggio Emilia is a typical Italian municipal museum with historical collections (natural history, archaeology) dating back to the 18^th and early 19^th century along with historical and ethnographic collections, paintings, decorative and contemporary art, etc. The collections are displayed in different venues , one of which, the main building, has recently restored and opened new galleries, adding 1.800 additional square metres to the already existing exhibition space.

One area of this new space in particular (called “For inspiration only”) represents a challenge from the interpretation point of view, as it displays a great variety of objects taken from the stores, mixing art, archaeology, natural science, curiosities and more recent materials in a sort of contemporary Wunderkammer, with the objective of linking objects to stories and inviting visitors to complement the stories provided by the museum with their own. In a nearby room in fact the wall is covered by panels which feature the stories connected to one or more objects. Each story is accompanied by a QR code which points to the museum’s website. People accessing the website via the QR code, will find there the story again, as well as a space to comment or add their own story. At the moment there a 40 stories, but the objective is to produce 365 of them, one a day, before May 2015 when the display will be presumably dismantled to make room for a new one.