From 14th to 17th December the Pino Pascali Foundation hosted an online exchange for the creation of museum merchandising products within the project “Monet – culture in motion in Adriatic NETwork of Museum” financed by the INTERREG IPA CBC Italy- Albania- Montenegro 2014/2020 Programme.
16 artists, 4 from each geographical area (Albania, Molise, Puglia, Montenegro), selected through a public call, worked on creation of designs for museum merchandising projects for the 10 museums of the MONET network.
The museums selected for Puglia Region are: the Ribezzo Archeological Museum in Brindisi, the Castromediano Museum in Lecce, the Foggia Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Pino Pascali Foundation in Polignano a Mare.
Originally, the project foresaw the organization of a series of artistic residences to be realized in a public space. Considering the Covid-19 measures, the context of action on which the original project wanted to intervene was reconfigured. The conversion to an online residence project has confirmed the goal of promoting processes of professional growth able to stimulate and favor courses of artistic, virtuous, innovative and stimulating research.
The artists, Nicola Macolino (Molise), Irena Rakcevic (Montenegro), Xhon Nikaj (Albania) and Carmelina Bracco (Apuglia) selected for the artistic residences organized by the Pino Pascali Foundation, have participated together with the other selected artists in the joint theory lessons organized in the mornings of 14th and 15th December.
The main topics discussed were the museum management linked to the major exhibitions, but above all, the development of integrated services for the museum, first and foremost the merchandising for the bookshop, a tendency in the British speaking countries that is a source of increase for the takings of the exhibition spaces with examples such as MET and MoMa for the U.S. and Tate and V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum9 for the U.K.
In the first two days Thomas Clement Salomon and Diego Giacomelli from Mondo Mostre, an Italian organization that follows modern and contemporary art exhibitions throughout the world, contributed with their valuable knowledge. In the first meeting, Thomas Clement Salomon talked about the organizational work of major exhibitions with a final exposition on the history of museum merchandising. On the second day, Diego Giacomelli gave a talk on the strategic importance of merchandising both for the purpose of creating financial income and for greater visibility and branding of the museum.
For the entire four days there have been workshops to develop the merchandising projects. The selected artists were supported by a tutor Mariapaola Spinelli for the Pascali Foundation that followed the entire process of the creation of the projects and accompanied the artists in the virtual tours edited by Santa Nastro of the Apulian museums organized by the Pino Pascali Foundation. The curator, Antonio Frugis of the Pascali Foundation intervened in the workshops together with Gabriella Berardi, director of the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art of Foggia.
Furthermore, the tutor held a lesson on the cultural and creative industries that are among the priorities of development in the agenda of 2021 – 2027 of the EU. The lesson was based on the analysis of Pier Luigi Sacco, a major expert of the argument.
During the artistic residence, the group of four artists realized 5 graphic projects of merchandising products for each of the 4 Apulian museums involved in the activity, that is a total of 20 designs, in accordance with the vision and the needs of each participating museum. The merchandising projects are as innovative and original as possible and represent the result of artistic – cultural collaboration created in the exchanges. The graphic projects will be gathered in a single catalogue that will be published on the MONET website.
