Seminar “Designing and Managing XXI Century Museums”
By Gvantsa Turmanidze
Thursday, January 31
On January 28, 2019, the seminar “Designing and Managing XXI Century Museums” was held by the initiative of the Italian Embassy in collaboration with Italian National Research Council, Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia and National Museum of Georgia.
David Lordkipanidze, the Director General of the National Museum of Georgia and Ambassador of the Republic of Italy to Georgia HE Antonio Bartoli made welcome speeches. The Ambassador underlined that this is the second seminar of the workshop series “New Technologies to Preserve and Promote Cultural Heritage: The Italian Experience” provided by Italian Embassy and aims to share the Italian knowledge and experience of the rich cultural heritage gained from the past. He also mentioned that the first seminar “digital storytelling” was held during last September and the third seminar, the concept of “the clever city” will take place on February 8, 2019.
The representatives of Georgian Government – Ms. Mariam Jashi, Chairperson of Education, Science and Culture Committee of the Parliament of Georgia and Mr. Levan Kharatishvili, Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia expressed their gratitude towards the Embassy of Italy to Georgia and all the parties involved in the organization of the seminar by emphasizing the importance of the event for better acknowledging the meaning and function of the museums.
Besides the Italian Institute for Technologies Applied to Cultural Heritage (ITABC-CNR) and Turin Egyptian Museum, the event had other leading Italian attendees like Goppion and Guicciardini and Magni Architetti.
Goppion S.p.A. an Italian manufacturing and engineering company that is a world leader in the manufacture and installation of museum display cases, was represented by Mr. David Desmet, who is a Sales and Marketing Coordinator of the company. He told a short history of Goppion, which was established in 1952 in Milan as a small glass-making workshop. Business was booming and the company went from creating single display cases to manufacturing entire installations for shops and then making a name for itself as a pioneer in «exhibition-design». Since 2000, Goppion’s business has expanded even further worldwide having collaborations with some of the most important museums in the world – the Louvre, the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
The second speaker of the seminar was Mr. Enrico Ferraris, the curator at Museo Egizio, which is the oldest museum dedicated to the pharaonic civilization and boasts the second largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world and the most important outside of Egypt.
Mr. Marco Magni, one of the founders of architectural firm Guicciardini & Magni Architetti, which is involved in cultural heritage projects, such as Museums, Theatres, Auditoriums and Libraries. Since 1990 the company has realized more than 40 museums and 60 temporary exhibitions in Italy and abroad, dealing with different kinds of exposition, ranging from archeology to contemporary art, industrial design to classical art and ethnography to fashion.
The last speaker of the seminar Ms. Alfonsina Pagano is the Italian National Research Council (CNR) research fellow, which is the largest and most important research body of Italy, the depository of a unique heritage of knowledge and skills. Ms. Pagano explained that the Virtual Heritage Lab of CNR carries out projects ranging from the activity of surveying and implementation of geographic information systems to the virtual reconstruction of landscapes, sites and artefacts with the aim to represent historical processes through interaction in immersive environments.
Interest towards the seminar was very evident according to a large number of attendees from museums, galleries, government officials, curators, media and private sector and so on.
Save the date for the next seminar, the concept of “the clever city”, February 8, 2019.
