Museology Professor Giovanni Valagussa

. – Museology

Professor 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 15^th 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 18^th-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 19^th century; English collecting and applied arts museums; ‘world fairs’ and museum-houses; collecting and American museums in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries; early 20^th-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

Small studies or cabinets in 15^th century Italy. The ideal place for studying and collecting in the Humanist and early-Renaissance periods, as found in some of the most important princely courts. Lionello’s study in Belfiore, Federico’s in Urbino and Gubbio, Cosimo’s in Florence, Isabella’s in Mantua and also lesser known studies like Bartolomeo Colleoni’s in Bergamo, are extraordinary examples of intelligence and culture containing what are often sublime works of art, as part of enterprises that had both philosophical and political connotations. The course will look at precedents in the 14^th century and then, one by one, these more significant examples – focusing on Lionello d’Este’s study – attempting to describe their original design and, as far as possible, their historical/philosophical context.

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 (1^st edition);

A.Mottola Molfino, Il libro dei musei, Turin, Allemandi, 1991 (and later editions);

R.Schaer, L’invention des musées, Paris, Gallimard, 1993 (Italian edition: Il museo. Tempio della memoria, Universale Electa-Gallimard, Milan 1996);

L.Becherucci, Lezioni di museologia (1969-1980), edited by A.Boralevi and 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 2002.

For the special subject

W.Liebenwein, Studiolo. Storia e tipologia di uno spazio culturale, Italian edition, Modena, Franco Cosimo Panini editore, 2005;

Le Muse e il Principe: arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano, exhibition catalogue, edited by A.Mottola Molfino (Milan, 1991), Modena, Franco Cosimo Panini editore, 1991.

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 at http://www2.unicatt.it/unicattolica/docenti/index.html or on the Faculty notice board.