. – Museology
PROF. GIOVANNI VALAGUSSA
COURSE AIMS
Students will be taught the basic lines of the history of museums and, more
specifically, of art museums taken as public places for collecting works of art: from
the very first phenomena in the ancient and Renaissance worlds through to the
modern and contemporary age.
COURSE CONTENT
General Section
History of the idea of a museum looking at key issues from their beginnings to the
present day: places for storing works of art in the ancient world: the Mouseion in
Alexandria; collecting in the Roman world; mediaeval treasures; collecting and the
taste for antiques in the 15th century; small studios in the Renaissance age;
Francesco I de Medici’s love of collecting; the ‘rooms full of wonders’; scientific
museums, libraries and art galleries in the 17 th century; the 18th-century Gran Tour
and birth of the modern museum; the Uffizi and Pio-Clementino Museum;
museums in Paris during the revolution; the museums of Munich and Berlin in the
early 19th century; English collecting and applied arts museums; ‘world fairs’ and
museum-houses; collecting and American museums in the late 19 th and early 20th
centuries; early 20th-century monumental museums; the Italian period of renewal
in the 1950s; the functional and aesthetic turning point of the Guggenheim in New
York; new spaces and new enterprises at the Pompidou Centre in Paris as a modern
museum in the age of exhibitions.
Special Subject
Thirty museums built during the last decade around the world: modern installations
and works of architecture for displaying art. During the course students will look at
a series of important examples of new museums or important renovations of
existing museums carried out over the last decade. Special attention will focus, on
one hand, on architectural aspects partly in relation to their functional purpose and,
on the other hand, installation-type aspects in relation to the type and nature of
collections on display.
READING LIST
For the general section
Students are advised to read and compare at least two of the following:
L.BINNI – G.PINNA, Museo. Storia e funzioni di una macchina culturale dal Cinquecento a oggi,
Milan, Garzanti, 1980 (1st edition);
A.MOTTOLA MOLFINO, Il libro dei musei, Torino, Allemandi, 1991 (and later editions);
R.SCHAER, L’invention des musées, Paris, Gallimard, 1993 (ed. it.: Il museo. Tempio della memoria,
Universale Electa-Gallimard, Milan 1996);
L.BECHERUCCI, Lezioni di museologia (1969-1980), edited by A.Boralevi e M.Pedone, Florence,
1995;
M.T. FIORIO, Il museo nella storia: dallo studiolo alla raccolta pubblica, Milan, Bruno Mondadori,
2011.
A useful chronological overview can be found in V.VERCELLONI, Cronologia del museo, Milan,
Jaca Book, 2007 and the handbook by F.BOTTARI E F.PIZZICANNELLA, L’Italia dei tesori.
Legislazione dei beni culturali, museologia, catalogazione e tutela del patrimonio artistico,
Bologna, Zanichelli 2002.
For the special subject
The reading list for the course will be provided at lectures.
TEACHING METHOD
Lectures with slides. Power-point presentations at lectures will be available for students
at the end of the course.
ASSESSMENT METHOD
Oral examinations. With the lecturer’s consent, students may be allowed to write their
own paper on an individual museum or topic related to the course’s special subject.
NOTES
Students will be tested at the examination on their knowledge of at least one important
museum in Italy they have recently visited.
Further
information
can
be
found
on
the
lecturer's
webpage
http://www2.unicatt.it/unicattolica/docenti/index.html or on the Faculty notice board.
at