The contemporary Italian approach to the Greek and Roman art industry remains rooted in methods based on a 19th-century scholarly tradition. The consequences of this methodological delay, which also concerns academic teaching so far, appear in many Italian archaeological museums adopting old-fashion display criteria. The result is silent objects that do not communicate with the public.
This project proposes a reinterpretation and visual re-contextualization of the classical art industry, with a special focus on Greek ideal sculpture and Greek and Roman painting. Our key issue is: how can we best communicate archaeological knowledge to the museum audience? So we address the interpretation of the classical art industry over time and stress the relevance of re-contextualisation of archaeological heritage in order to draft a new history-based model both for teaching and display. Our approach combines the history of archaeological thought, systematic recovery of topographic and contextual data and analysis of ancient Greek sources. The result will be an idea of a `museum of the future that engages, stimulates and inspires the public it serves, and plays an active role in promoting the heritage of the classical tradition within communities.
Museums are the place where scholarly specialization and its `democratic¿ dissemination to a larger audience meet. Nowadays museums in Italy face an existential cultural and financial crisis. Visitors have often a feeling that the impressive display of masterpieces was designed more for contemplation rather than an easy comprehension. However, our view is that museums have a value not only as a repository of objects dedicated to their preservation, but also as means of dissemination of knowledge, and the dissolution of ignorance. Most of the Italian archaeological museums seem unaware of what people see, know, and access. In our world, everyone has easy access to massive amounts of images, `facts¿ and opinions. This digital plenitude overrides the special authority of the museum; the public has ineradicably changed. The contemporary public comes with new visions and new expectations. The rare has become commonplace. What is easily acquired is negligently discarded and forgotten. How can museums re-invest in their artifacts and expertise with the power to convince and to impress? We are fully convinced that ancient objects without knowledge of an antiquity's archaeological context are meaningless. Context is everything, more exactly context(s) are, that is the many different ways antiquity was used and changed hands in different circumstances and then the numerous ways in which it was used and housed subsequently. Therefore an archaeological museum should exhibit to the widest possible audience, it should also kidnap the public attention and reflect upon the information it offers. It must not be elitist, in order to justify its funding. It should become a meeting place without losing its educational aim, already successfully experimented in numerous European museums. A successful museum should share its expertise, and prove how an art center can become also economically productive. In order to give substance to these aims, we have established partnerships with a number of prestigious Italian museums, whose holdings will provide the fundamental set of case studies for our investigation and successive experimental display. These include the National Archaeological Museum of Aquileia, the Museo Nazionale Romano in Rome, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and¿ These institutions will provide the proving ground to test our proposals and work with us towards an integrated and historically accurate model of display of the ¿masterpieces¿ of ancient art and their elusive creators.
Traditionally archaeological museums reflect or assimilate the debates going on in the related discipline; the question is how does this affect the way in which the past is displayed to the public? That could be called a `crisis of representation' in archaeology. The principal characteristic of this crisis is the notion that there are an objective and monolithic past that awaits revelation by the informed expert. There are many versions of the past, all constructed in relation to the present and hence changeable. Providing a new interpretation of the ancient production we will be able to transform notions of archaeological representation in museums into something more responsive to the needs of the coming century. How, then, might we go about doing it? For example, making clear that in museum display there is a hidden process whereby one moves from evidence to interpretation. In academic writings, it is normal practice to assemble a wide range of evidence to support an argument that can be critically evaluated, and the theoretical perspective behind the interpretation is usually explicit. In museums, however, this process is generally completely invisible. Assertions are given with no indication of how these assertions are arrived at, or that they might be anything other than completely objective and true. True our research we aim to reconceive the relationship between objects and audience construction a museum of dialogue rather than a museum imposing its viewpoint on the visitor. A display of classical sculptures cannot be the same in every latitude and will mean something quite different in Italy, Greece or England and cannot be relegated to a label written according to an obscure scholarly based interpretation.
This project proposes a reinterpretation and visual re-contextualization of the classical art industry, with a special focus on Greek ideal sculpture and Greek. So we address the interpretation of the classical art industry over time and stress the relevance of re-contextualization of archaeological heritage in order to draft a new history-based model both for teaching and display. Our approach combines the history of archaeological thought, systematic recovery of topographic and contextual data. The result will be an idea of a `museum of the future¿ that engages, stimulates and inspires the public it serves, and plays an active role in promoting the heritage of the classical tradition within communities.