Musei Universitari Unimore

Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia

http://www.musei.re.it/

History of the Museum

The first nucleus of the Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia takes origin in 1799, on the wave of the new political climate set in in town after the French Revolution. It begins with the acquisition by the municipality of the scientist Lazzaro Spallanzani’s personal collection (Scandiano, 1729–Pavia, 1799), which destiny was to become a Natural History Laboratory for the schools of the city. In 1830, the collection is placed in Palazzo San Francesco, now Palazzo dei Musei, and is incremented with donations and acquisition in the years that follow. In 1862, the Antiquities Laboratory of the palaeoethnologist Gaetano Chierici is added to the Natural History Museum. Gaetano Chierici is one of the founders of Palaeoethnology as a scientific discipline. Chierici’s design expands in the following years and the Laboratory becomes Home History Museum in 1870, including the Marble Gallery and a Studio of outstanding Reggio citizens, where also the relics of important men of science whose name is tied to Reggio Emilia find their place: Antonio Vallisneri, Bonaventura Corti, Leopoldo Nobili, Giovanni Battista Venturi, Filippo Re. During the years of Chierici’s direction, the Home History Museum becomes the heart of a new school for Palaeoethnology, with its mouthpiece in the “Bullettino di Paletnologia italiana”, published in Reggio Emilia between 1877 and 1884.  In 1880, Chierici presides over a committee composed by Pellegrino Strobel e Torquato Taramelli. The committee assigns the direction of the Natural History Museum to Alfredo Jona, with the precise objective to separate the Spallanzani Collection from all successive adding, to classify the specimen according to the nomenclature used at the end of 18th century, thus to make it a Scientific Monument to the memory of the great scientist. The material added during the 19th century would create a new naturalistic collection. Such historicization of the Spallanzani Collection has allowed it to come to us unaltered both in its furniture and contents and to be a precious evidence of the eighteenth-century museology.

Now the Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia are part of the Unity for Project and Development of Culture and Museum Programs of the municipality of Reggio Emilia and form a system that comprehends many seats hosting permanent collections (Palazzo dei Musei, Parmeggiani Gallery, Museum of Tricolore, Psychiatry Museum, Museum of the Basilica della Ghiara), spaces dedicated to temporary expositions and events, especially on contemporary (Chiostri di San Domenico, Spazio Gerra, Officina delle Arti), and the historical buildings of the Synagogue and Mauriziano, which often host temporary exhibitions as well. To the historical collections of Lazzaro Spallanzani and Gaetano Chierici other more recent exposition stand next, covering the fields of Archaeology, Arts, Ethnography, Natural Science, History, and also Psychiatry with the new History of the Psychiatry Museum at the Lombroso ward in the former San Lazzaro Psychiatric Hospital.

Since 3 May 2014 very new exhibition spaces at the upper floor of the Palazzo dei Musei have joined. They are spaces designed by the architect Italo Rota and characterized by dynamical expositions, where the traditional separation among disciplines dissolves and the objects create a dialog among them and with the visitor through a series of cross-references, giving cues for unusual connections, for storytelling, stirring the visitor towards a not passive fruition.

Scientific and Didactic Activities:

The system of the Civic Museums offers itself as a place for lifelong education, through many and diversified initiatives for widespread. Among them a particular role has the “Museum for the school”, a schedule of proposals for didactic in schools. It is then joined by temporary exhibitions and various initiatives such as guided tours, conferences, book presentations, meetings for an adult audience, activities for children, itineraries from the museum to the city, etc.

The Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia have been proposing for more than 30 years a program of didactic activities for schools on the different themes connected to the museum collections.

To the intention of furnishing the schools with a support in the activities of the various disciplines another objective, now primary, was added, i.e. giving the student spurs, curiosities, capacity to construct questions and activate personal connections.

It is now established that museums must not confine themselves in exhibiting themselves and transmitting knowledge. They must propose themselves as places for active education, be involving, encourage individual and personal appropriation of the contents proposed and interpretation capacity. The museum pursues all the above favoring involving communication methodologies, activities, storytelling, as well as pathways in which the traditional boundaries among disciplines dissolve and bridges are built.

The museum as a place not only for learning, but for learning to learn, to reason on Arts, History, Science, to discover interests and attitudes.

In the field of Science, the historical Lazzaro Spallanzani Collection, the Gaetano Chierici Palaeoethnology Museum and the History of Psychiatry Museum together are an important base for the transmission of curiosity and interest towards scientific knowledge: these exhibitions are a “material memory”, a medium to link students and world of scientific research, and a scientific approach to historical research.


Museum Services

LIBRARY: The Civic Museums have a library, called Biblioteca delle Arti, in the palace where the Parmeggiani Gallery has its seat. Its objective is to promote research and divulgation in the fields of Archaeology and History of Arts. It has free access and frequently hosts activities such as book presentations, conferences, storytelling, showings. A special section of the library is addressed to children and joined to the project Didart, which offers itself as a resource to develop creativity and imagination on arts for children and adults. It proposes activities for schools, training courses for teachers, meetings on art books, illustration, and didactics for arts.

Loans for exhibitions

Fotographic archive

Apprenticeships

Guided tours

Didactic activities

Voluntary work

 

Online resources:

Virtual tour (static)
 

Openings

Tuesdays to Fridays 9.00 – 12.00

Saturdays, Sundays and holidays 10.00 – 13.00 / 16.00 – 19.00

Openings from 17 June to 31 August 2014

Palazzo dei Musei - Museo del Tricolore

Tuesdays to Saturdays 9.00 – 12.00

Palazzo dei Musei, Parmeggiani Gallery, Museum of Tricolore

Tuesdays to Sundays 21.00 – 23.00

Closed on Mondays

Free entry

 

Contacts:

Palazzo dei Musei

via Spallanzani, 1 – t. 0522 456816


Parmeggiani Gallery

corso Cairoli, 2 – t. 0522 451054


Museum of Tricolore

piazza Prampolini, 1 – t. 0522 456033

for guided tours t. 0522 456805


Director

Elisabetta Farioli

T 0522/456477

elisabetta.farioli@municipio.re.it


Person in charge for archaeological and ethnographical collections

Roberto Macellari

T 0522/456811

roberto.macellari@municipio.re.it


Person in charge for naturalistic collections

Silvia Chicchi

T 0522/456808

silvia.chicchi@municipio.re.it


Coordination and communication

Georgia Cantoni

T 0522/456825

georgia.cantoni@municipio.re.it


Administration

Mara Spaggiari

T 0522/456807

mara.spaggiari@municipio.re.it


Person in charge for security and logistics

Antonio Fabbris

T 0522/456813

antonio.fabbris@municipio.re.it


Biblioteca delle Arti

Adele Beltrami

T 0522/456801

adele.beltrami@municipio.re.it

Marilena Margari

T 0522/456809

marilena.margari@municipio.re.it

Giulia Bondavalli

T 0522/456821

giulia.bondavalli@municipio.re.it


Press Office

Patrizia Paterlini

T 0522/456532  – fax 0522/433266

patrizia.paterlini@municipio.re.it


Coordination artistic exhibitions and collections

Alessandro Gazzotti

T 0522/585182

alessandro.gazzotti@municipio.re.it

Maria Montanari

T 0522/455262

maria.montanari@municipio.re.it


Internet site

Andrea Viani

T 0522/456823

andrea.viani@municipio.re.it


Didactic activities – booking

Daniela Davoli

T 0522/456805

didattica.musei@municipio.re.it


Didactic activities – Persons in charge for didactic projects

Riccardo Campanini, Gianna Imovilli, Roberta Pedroni, Giada Pellegrini, Chiara Pelliciari


Didactic activitie – collaborators

Giulia Bagnacani, Chiara Cimurri, Sara Donelli, Licia Galimberti, Elena Gorreri, Arneda Hamati, Martina Manfredi, Vainer Marconi,

Galileo Rocca, Elisabeth Sciarretta, Licia Trolli, Elisa Vecchi


Fotographic archive

Silvia Chicchi

T 0522/456808

silvia.chicchi@municipio.re.it