How are museums in Naples ensuring they stay relevant?

Two museum directors explain the ways they’re working with their local neighborhoods

Dr Paolo Giulierini is the director of the MANN Archaeological Museum of Naples and Mrs. Laura Valente is the president of the Madre Contemporary Art Museum. Both institutions have become staples in the city as places of historical and cultural heritage, but while they both house objects, artifacts, and artworks from thousands of years ago, what relevance do they have in the city today?

Here Dr Giulierini and President Valente talk about the individual missions of each institution and the ways in which their teams are working to maintain a strong relationship with the community that surrounds each museum.

National Archaeological Museum of Naples building

Sala 18 at National Archaeological Museum of Naples

Dr Giulierini, how does a museum that preserves artifacts dating back millenia stay relevant to the local community?

Dr Giulierini: From the past comes an important message for the present: it’s a message that abides by the complexity of beauty, products of many components and, of course, contradictions. To convey these ideas in the contemporary world means to modernize the language and the ways of communicating these objects, in order to demonstrate the everlasting importance of them and understand what we can learn from them.

1977-2018 Mario Martone Museo Madre exhibition view at Madre

Can you both provide an example of how each institution carries out its mission beyond the museum walls?


Dr Giulierini: Through the Obvia project, MANN has established an extra-museum network called Extramann to promote a partnership between 16 cultural sites of the city. The network is successful not only thanks to a correlated discounts policy, but mostly due to a common vision that allows us to identify a Naples-based cultural brand that unifies big autonomous museums with smaller, more specific sites, therefore strengthening the Partenopean identity.

Felice@Madre (From the collection of Madre - Donnaregina Contemporary Art Museum)

President Valente: Madre has recently promoted numerous projects and events aimed at redefining its relationship within its neighborhood, as well as other areas of the city and the suburbs. An example would be the project Felice@Madre, which saw the creation of a summer factory where children and teenagers of the suburbs of Naples participated in a series of workshops. Through this, we created the ability to explore and “seize” the museum space in a way that wouldn’t normally be impossible.

Additionally the recent walkabout we organized for the exhibition 1977 2018. Mario Martone Museo Madre, saw a completely new approach. The director took a “walk” with the visitors starting from Madre – in the city centre – and finishing at San Giovanni a Teduccio, in the east side of the city. It was an occasion to reflect, both from the point of view of one of the most important directors of our country, but also on the relationship between the neighborhoods of Naples, which are so close to one another but each one full of cultures, social layers, and different historical-urbanistic heritages.

Felice@Madre (From the collection of Madre - Donnaregina Contemporary Art Museum)

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