Saturday 15 March 2025 at 3:00 pm in the Sala degli Affreschi of the Accademia Tadini the series of conferences continues as part of the project “Accademia Tadini: an open museum” funded by Fondazione Cariplo.

The meeting starts from the volume Il museo necessario. Mappe per tempi complessi, edited by Simona Bodo and Anna Chiara Cimoli (Nomos edizioni, 2023), and questions the role of an institution whose legitimacy, in the current context of crisis, is being questioned by many. Poverty, wars, climate change, racism, marginalization: the catalog of the world’s evils seems to have spiraled in on itself, presenting at our door emergencies that, perhaps naively, we believed had been eradicated, or at least pushed away. And yet, culture is not an accessory, it is not something that is cultivated when there is nothing more urgent to deal with. On the contrary, culture must be nourished by questions, repositionings, listening tools, because it is, above all, a civil practice. The museum is called to participate actively in this practice: during the meeting we will try to explore methods and perspectives that favor this activation.

Simona Bodo is a museologist, researcher and independent consultant on issues related to the social role of museums and the development of open and plural “heritage communities”. Co-founder of the working group Patrimonio di Storie, she is responsible for the Patrimonio e Intercultura program and the homonymous site, promoted by Fondazione ISMU-Iniziative e Studi sulla Multietnicità. She is part of the Advisory Board of the Solidarity in Action Network, an international network composed of museum professionals, academics, social workers and activists.

Anna Chiara Cimoli, art historian and museologist, teaches at the University of Bergamo. She deals in particular with social museology, participatory practices and coloniality. Since 2020, she has been the curator of MUBIG, the community museum of the Greco neighborhood in Milan (with ABCittà and Pinacoteca di Brera). President of the C.A.S.V.A. Foundation, she co-directs the visual studies magazine ‘Roots§Routes. Research on Visual Culture’ and is the scientific director of the series “Archi”. I quaderni della Fondazione C.A.S.V.A. and Museologia present at Nomos editions.

Text credits: Accademia Tadini
Cover image credits: G. Bonomelli