Moreshet Seminar on “Museum Management Today”, March 27. 2025
In the management of a museum’s activity, creativity becomes increasingly necessary
since the users of this structure today are continuously overexposed to the
“spectacularization” of information and quantities of notions in general, and of culture in
particular, inside and outside museum structures.
The knowledge “given” by TV, fiction or the major offers of “cultural” tourism, virtual or real,
have, as their driving factor, fun, entertainment, quick gratification, because the means of
transmitting knowledge is not afraid, indeed, it chooses to be seductive even at the cost of
approximation, so that the average visitor does not have to engage in an intellectual effort.
A Museum must not compete but neither reject the power of the suggestions of the virtual
universe because its role, its traditional mission, remains that of collecting, preserving,
studying and disseminating, allowing the enjoyment of its heritage to both researchers and
the public. A museum structure must be able to integrate the new digital opportunities with
analogical ones, not replace or overlap the centrality of a “real” find, “tangible”, except to
expand its rhetorical capacity and re-set it in a decorous and coherent context. The
centrality must be placed on the direct relationship, on the opportunity of a comparison
with uniqueness, which is comparable to a ritual, what Walter Benjamin effectively defined
as the aura of a work or a find, and which should not be confused with spectacularization.
The first in fact requires an intellectual and emotional commitment on the part of the
viewer, the second is substantially a passive participation, of enjoyment, even when it is
distracted and generic, tinged with satisfaction and curiosity, which are often achieved
regardless, beyond the object on display.
Today the challenge in managing any museum is to make its heritage accessible to the
widest potential public, therefore it must be approachable in a modular way, suitable for
different levels of knowledge, for age groups, therefore a multitude of uses, knowledge,
interests.
The exhibits or objects on display are to be considered fragments of a whole, of real
culture or life, and silent witnesses torn from their context. The preciousness of what is
exhibited is independent of its commercial value and lies in being, exactly, a witness,
therefore the exhibition must be capable of encouraging visitors to ask themselves where
we come from, what we are, what we imagine and desire (our being), a knowledge that
can be acquired in an immediate and direct relationship of the visitor with those
“testimonies”, and which leads us, even if only for a fragment of time, to the awareness of
being part of the universe, of humanity.
The teaching apparatus must be able to contextualize what is exhibited and make
intuitively understand the connection between the single object and the sets. The Museum
must also be a place of continuous re-proposal of various activities, where its heritage is
brought to the fore, in different contexts, in temporary exhibitions or educational activities.
For more info see the Seminar poster 