ICOM International Council of Museums - Museo Estancia Jesuitica ...

Cristofano: The Italian Contemporary Museological Debate
Clemente’s museological conception stems from a critique of Cirese’s concept of museum as a
place that displays scientific research results. According to Clemente this would lead to a «new
elitist tradition of museography, not directed to connoisseurs and experts of “Art” any more, but to
students and scholars» 7 . On the contrary, a museum’s task should be to translate the language of
specialized learning «into ways of communication and perception that meet the public’s
imagination and competence» 8 , while maintaining the strength and depth typical of the academic
world. The basic idea is that it is necessary to refer to a mixed mass audience. To that end,
Clemente chose the notion of unitary setting by which the museum becomes a stage, the place of
learning and of mass communication, where the message is not intellectually isolated but is
received as a complete perceptive experience 9 . The unitary setting should take its various aspects
into account: the whole museum setting, with its tangible and intangible exhibits, the dialogue
among them, panels, screens, and even the territory where the museum is located. Through such
a museum experience, the visitor can even reinterpret evidences of the living heritage, so that the
museum becomes a fact-finding guide of it 10 .
The communicative relationship that develops between museum and visitor within the museum
system described by Clemente, should reach both the local and the “unknown” visitor, who is
usually an outsider to the local cultural context of the museum. Both will find their dialogic
dimension in the museum messages. In particular, the local visitor will be able to establish an
«interactive relation with such a museum that accepts and fosters his informative and constructive
potential (bringing photographs, objects, giving information)» 11 . The museum defined by Clemente,
should be based on a wide and non coercive leading idea like the plot of an extemporary play,
open to the dialogue and to the integrations of visitors 12 . This idea opposes a static concept of
museum, as an improper place to represent the dynamic aspect of living culture, and prompts the
active participation and involvement of the population in the museum, towards a wide
understanding and vital sharing of their cultural heritage.
7 Id., Graffiti di museografia…cit., p.137. Since its beginnings this museographic rationalism is in contrast with
conceptions of museum-collection, that gather objects without any specific norms or rules, letting prevail the aesthetic
dimension of artefacts. Instead, the rationalist conception, referring to the principles of Enlightment pedagogy, claimed
«the dissemination of scientific knowledge by introducing audience to its concepts and conventions» (ibid., p.134). The
rationalist museum of Cirese become the place of the “perspicuous representation” theorized by the philosopher
Ludwing Wittgenstein, insofar as in its context it is possible “to understand” catching nexuses more than “demonstrate”
going back to the origins (cfr. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie, Basil Blakwell,
Oxford 1980). Cfr. Pietro Clemente, Graffiti di museografia…, cit., p.137.
8 Pietro Clemente, Graffiti di museografia…, cit., p.139. Clemente then underlines the fact that «the museum product
is hence a TRANSLATED language, not a direct communication of scientific conventions. And its basic specification
is that its communication must be above all non verbal, non verbose, and not essayistic-scriptural».
9 Ibid., p.142. In order to deepen the concept of unitary setting, cfr. Pietro Clemente, Graffiti di museografia…, cit., pp.
113-128 e 142-145; Id., “Museografia, estetica, comunicazione”, Nuove Effemeridi, IV, n.8, 1989, pp.97-102, and in
Graffiti di museografia…, cit., pp.147-164.
10 Pietro Clemente, Graffiti di museografia…, cit., p.116.
11 Ibid., p.114.
12 Ibid., p.117.
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