Notes
January 29, 2013

Designing narratives of 20 Italian museums

Despite some of the most significant treasures in international art preserved in the most notable Italian museums – these institutions couldn't draw the economic benefits out of this potential. Project Museums of Paper aimed to articulate the museum merchandising by matching 20 designers with 20 different museums. Their task was to create products that would relate with their collections of art – stimulating the future sales in museum's shops.

Collana necklace is obtained by the assembling of circular cuttings recovered from invitation cards to past exhibitions held at the MADRE (Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples), mounted with accessories in brass. Design: Giovanni Scafuro. Photo: Pietro Scapin.

Necklace Collana designed by G. Scafuro for MADRE (Naples). Photo: Pietro Scapin.

Musei di Carta (Museums of Paper) has gathered 20 Italian designers in this research project that suppose to activate self-financing activities within the museums. Each designer was associated with one of the most important national museums investigating the possibilities of a future product line. The project was created and promoted by Aliantedizioni, an Italian design consultancy.

Omaggio a Morandi (Homage to Giorgio Morandi), a collection of décor items inspired by this artist's celebrated "still life" works. Common objects (vases, bottles and bowls) achieved with recycled cellular paper that can reconstruct the images from Morandi's paintings in 3D. Design: Ilaria Marelli for the Museo del Novecento (Milan).

Raccontastorie (Storytellers) by GumDesign for the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia, Rome.

The research resulted in the exhibition Musei di Carta that features 20 designs made in recycled paper or card – proposing the models of the future souvenirs.

Patella is a lampshade composed by the overlaying of various strips of etched paper to be mounted via the normal lamp rings sold in shops. The result is to create a soft lighting effect that emanates from the special texture obtained in the paper, inspired by the decorative Arabian motifs found in the Palazzo Abatellis. Design: Cut&Paste for the Museo Regionale di Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo.

Dama degli Uffizi, travel version of the checkers or draughts game composed of a printed card chessboard plus 24 two-tone card pieces. The folding board reproduces a detail of the flowery meadow from Botticelli's celebrated Primavera, computer processed to achieve the appropriate alternation of dark and pale squares. The game's pieces are obtained by raising the "leaves" of the 2-dimensional four-leaf clover-shaped cards so as to have 12 dark and 12 light artificial flowers. Design: Alessandro Loschiavo & Samantha Acciuffi. Photo: Samantha Acciuffi.

Pagelight, a recycled-card bookmarker with a contained battery-operated LED for night-time reading. The lighting works via the card's slits and easy folding. Design: Matteo Bazzicalupo+Raffaella Mangiarotti (DeepDesign) for the Triennale Design Museum (Milan).

Le mille facce di Paolina (The Thousand Paolina's faces), one of the most celebrated icons of female beauty, Paolina Borghese as portrayed by Antonio Canova, becomes the cue for a series of ironic interpretations: printed card masks and folding postcards that are vertically self-standing. Design: Ludovica & Roberto Palomba for the Galleria Borghese (Rome).

Musei di Carta is curated by Alessandro Loschiavo, that conceived it as an itinerant event. After exhibiting in Milan and Palermo, the show is about to open in Rome on February, 8 2012. The exhibition is designed by Makoto Kawamoto.

– Image Courtesy: Aliantedizioni.

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