Concept
The ADI Design Museum keeps its promise to live in the present by re-interpreting Italian design through a contemporary dialectic, with the introduction of substantial innovations in the Compasso d’Oro Historical Collection permanent exhibition, intended for visitors as well as scholars and specialists. Just over a year after the inauguration and having put on about thirty temporary exhibitions, there is a change in both the contents and the set-up.
“The task of every museum is the continuous reinterpretation of the objects it safeguards”, commented ADI President Luciano Galimberti. “However, the ADI Design Museum does not want to limit itself to a reinterpretation, but rather to expand and offer a different interpretation of cultural and productive contexts, underlining the relationship of products with the here and now and its values. This is the challenge which the museum is answering through its innovative format, renewing the general scenario and its dialogue with visitors.”
The original distribution of the exhibits with which the museum debuted in 2021, where the awarded products in each edition was accompanied by a particular in-depth space, has been updated: the products illustrated in the in-depth analysis have been changed, along with the documents on display and the story of how the object was conceived and produced under the guidance of a new curatorial team (Francesca Balena Arista, Giovanni Comoglio and Maite García Sanchis), a new display set-up by Matteo Vercelloni and a new graphic image by Andrea Rovatti. This is followed by a substantial renewal of the entire collection, which has been reorganized, again by the curator Beppe Finessi.
The curatorial team sums up the new concept as follows “In rediscovering emblematic objects that have written the history of design, we wanted to recognize the complex relationship that they have enjoyed with their context, as a response to a request and various stimuli, but also in addressing the evolution of things to come, sometimes a genuine manifestation, going beyond their value of immediacy or as “archaeological” witnesses. The thirty award-winners selected are all different and evoke a considerable number of open questions, which when looked at further in-depth today reveal their extraordinary value as instruments not only for interpreting the past but also for addressing the urgencies of the present”.
Overall, what is on offer is a new point of view regarding the winners of the Compasso d’Oro from 1954 to today, an update made possible by the wealth of objects and documents kept in the Compasso d’Oro Historical Collection (over 2,500) along with a solid demonstration of the museum’s inspiring principle of giving the general public the opportunity to discover design from ever new points of view, and as they have never seen it before. Thanks to the continuing succession of current interpretations, the objects of history are always the present, and permanently so.
