Output details

Neue Museen

Neue Museen is a research project that explored the archives of Museo Palazzo Bianco and Museo di Sant’Agostino, Genoa and the Fondazione Franco Albini, Milan, to produce a 16mm film.

It focussed on finding and reconstructing, as a model, Albini and Marcenaro’s once renowned hydraulic support for displaying Pisano’s ‘Fragment from the Tomb of Margharita of Brabant’ (1313). This device, installed in the Palazzo Bianco in 1951 to international acclaim, was removed in 1970. For 40 years the display device rusted in the basement of the Museo di Sant’Agostino. The research involved the discovery of the device, taking accurate measurements and constructing detailed scale drawings, examining Albini’s original drawings and working with a CGI artist to reconstruct the movement of the device in its original setting. This reconstruction was then incorporated into a 16mm film shot in the Genoa Museums. Using a hand-held camera as an investigative tool, the film explores Albini and Marcenaro’s concept of the ‘floating museum’.

The film has been screened widely and was presented at the international conference series ‘Come sarà il museo del futuro?’ MAXXI, Rome (2011) and it was installed in the Museo di Sant’Agostino next to the Pisano sculpture it depicts (2011). It was included in the Albini room of the exhibition ‘La Sindrome Dell’Influenza’, Triennale Design Museum, Milan (2013) alongside the recovered device. A digital version is published in the exhibition catalogue for this exhibition, ‘Elevatio Animae’ available as an iPad app. The research, including the first sustained account in English of the role of Marcenaro in designing the two Genoa Museums, was presented at the Association of Art Historians (AAH) Conference (2012). The research was funded by awards from the British Academy and the AAH.