Museo delle Culture
 Villa Malpensata (2012) |
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| Data | |
|---|---|
| place | Lugano |
| Art |
Ethnological Museum
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| opening | September 23, 1989 |
| management |
Francesco Paolo Campione
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| Website | |
The musec - Museo delle Culture (until 2006: Museo delle culture extraeuropee ) is a Swiss museum for non-European cultures in Lugano . It opened on September 23, 1989. It is managed by Francesco Paolo Campione and has been in Villa Malpensata since 2019 .
history
The museum was founded on September 23, 1989 under the name Museum Extra-European Cultures , renamed the Museum of Cultures in 2007 and MUSEC in 2017. It is part of the cultural center of the city of Lugano and the main seat is the central Villa Malpensata. Access to the museum is possible from both Via Mazzini and Riva Caccia.
The museum was founded to preserve most of the ethnic works of art collected by Serge Birignoni, particularly from the Far East, India, Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Oceania. Over the years, MUSEC has expanded its collections thanks to numerous donations and permanent loans.
building
Since its opening to the public and until 2016, the Heleneum was the seat of the MUSEC. The Heleneum is a villa on the shores of Lake Lugano , built by Hélène Bieber between 1930 and 1934 based on the architectural model of the "Petit Trianon" in Versailles.
The restoration planned for 2014, with which MUSEC was to get a larger and more central location, included the main building as well as the two adjacent buildings to the north, which are intended for offices and the research and documentation center, as well as the terraced garden in the south, which was redesigned in this way was designed to accommodate the outdoor areas of the MUSEC and the raised terrace that leads to the new main entrance. All rooms have been rearranged according to international climatic and museum standards and equipped with the best security conditions.
In 2017 MUSEC moves to Villa Malpensata. The villa was built by the Caccia family in the mid-eighteenth century in the style that shaped the monumental and landscaping of the shores of the great Alpine lakes.
Collections
The Brignoni Collection
The basis for the museum was the legacy of the Swiss artist and collector Serge Brignoni (1903–2002), who collected ethnic works of art between 1930 and the mid-1980s and finally decided to donate them to the city of Lugano. The collection thus testifies above all to the connection between the forms of creativity of the "South Seas" cultures and the subject that the artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century discussed in their circles and tried to create in their works.
Brignoni collected pieces of high quality craftsmanship. The genres and geographical origins largely correspond to what is customary in the European, Australian and North American collections of the mid-twentieth century. A preference for sculptural works that are characterized by expressionist design and a particular wealth of drawings and picture decoration becomes clear.
Other collections
After the museum opened and especially since its reopening in 2005, the MUSEC has housed many other collections. These include, among others:
- Ceschin-Pilone-Fagioli Collection
- with over 5,000 hand-colored albumin photographs , taken in Japan from the middle of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century.
- Pilone Collection
- with over 400 works or groups of works from Chinese theater, including painted masks and faces, headgear, make-up and costume accessories, fans, musical instruments and entire stage sets.
- Nodari collection
- with a thousand works of art, two large river boats, almost 6,000 pictures, 71 documentaries and over 60 hours of tape recordings that Alfredo and Emma Nodari collected during their travels to Africa (especially the Congo) in the 1950s and 1960s.
- Everlé collection
- Claude Everlé (1935–2015) traveled to the Sahel, West Africa and Central Africa from 1962 to 1984 and collected African art. About thirty colorful and hyper-expressionist theater masks and puppets from Mali are exhibited, which stage the types and situations of human comedy in exuberant performances, with a pronounced vein of irony and social criticism.
Exhibitions
MUSEC preserves and expands art collections from the Far East, India, Southeast Asia and Oceania. The museum, an important research center for the anthropology of art, offers the public at least three exhibitions at the same time, capable of conveying the richness and overall message of its cultural project.
The Spazio Tesoro , which is located at the entrance of the museum and is freely accessible, accompanies the visitor on a periodically renewed tour with works from the Brignoni collection and the other main collections of the museum.
The Spazio Maraini presents the exhibitions of the "Esovisioni" cycle, which is dedicated to travel photography and the theme of the exotic in the work of great photographers.
The Spazio Cielo is entirely dedicated to organizing the "Cameredarte" project exhibitions, devoted to new acquisitions, to the collectors who collaborate with MUSEC and to contemporary artists who, over the years, have approached the museum's activities.
In the Spazio mostre , which extends over two floors of the museum, cyclically changing themes are presented in the museum.
Activities, facilities and services
MUSEC's activities are based on the scientific research carried out by its associates and other collaborators in association with museums, universities and cultural institutions around the world. For this reason, the museum is also the setting for seminars and training activities: university lectures, refresher courses and workshops on anthropology and museography. The storage rooms of MUSEC can be visited by appointment and house a conservation and technical museum laboratory, which is equipped for the needs of the museum and for the professional advice of third parties.
The educational offer is carried out by specialist staff and includes workshops for children, guided tours, conference visits and other forms of dissemination that can also be tailored to the needs of the users.
By appointment, MUSEC also offers visitors a tour of the villa. The museum also makes its architectural spaces available for meetings, special events and as a backdrop for photo and film recordings.
literature
- Città di Lugano (ed.): Culture Extraeuropee. Collezione Serge e Graziella Brignoni. Lugano 1989
- Città di Lugano (ed.): Museo delle Culture Extraeuropee. Museum guide. Lugano 1990
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Details on the name change that was decided on January 10, 2007 (website of the Museo delle Culture)
- ↑ Details