Product Description
Title : IL RICHIAMO DELL’EDEN
From natural science collection to museum exhibition
Maker of product: Maria Clara Ruggieri Tricoli
Format: 17X24
n° pages: 496
ottobre 2004
The relationship between museum and territory has been largely revaluated by contemporary museology, particularly by the New Museology movement of which the author of this book is an exponent. This relationship represents one of the essential components which, through centuries of elaboration, have led to the modern concept of museum. After dealing with museum archetypes in the ancient world with her successful L’idea di museo, Maria Clara Ruggieri Tricoli now turns her attention to a particular aspect, the relationship between nature, territory and collecting in a period which, though scarcely considered by museography, is quite interesting: from the dissolution of the Roman Empire through the XVI century. By the end of this period, all of Europe had witnessed the spread of art galleries and wunderkammer that were authentic museums to all effects. The key of interpretation that guides this lengthy treatise is the powerful symbolic form of Eden. Nostalgia for Paradise Lost, between memory of the past and project for the future, indeed constitutes the point of departure for every relationship with nature. Natural artefacts collecting is no exception, even though the models of the places destined to host and order collections, in the end are quite distant from the Edenic state of empathy with nature and direct knowledge of it which constituted their prime motive. This is history written with an eye to today’s reality and to planning a new interdisciplinary museum where artifice and nature can be ideally recomposed.