The evolution of the form of the museum as an institutional body passes from the nineteenth-century fin de siècle building to the neutral white cube of a modernist style up to, today, the solutions of the contemporary museum as a true work of architectural art. The museum becomes a highly attractive complex even apart from the objects on display, generally modern and contemporary art, but not only. This is the case of the municipal exhibition space of Zumpano, the MAE - ethnographic art museum - which has been proposed since its design as a site for cultural production in the territory, assuming the value of a place dedicated to artistic creation, dynamic open and not limited when it welcomes in its spaces for artists in residence, becoming a space for action decentralized from the multiple and changing urban context; it is an effective and real meeting place for ideas and experiences between artists, intellectuals, professionals and the public.
The architectural space of the museum is configured as a completely open space to reveal its precious and refined cultural content - an important full-height, sky-earth window opens onto a scenario that visually incorporates the building into the surrounding area and makes the visitor immediately perceive the osmosis with the territory.
The exhibition space is divided into three sections: contemporary art, ethnography and a multimedia educational area for children which, with the help of augmented reality, offers visitors a completely new educational experience that is still not widespread in the Calabrian museum system. The suitable flexibility of the museum environments offers, as the functions change, always new solutions, responding to the most up-to-date designs relevant to the each time different character of the temporary exhibitions promoted, whose rapid succession is vital for the cultural balance of the museum itself.
The MAE presents itself with a free-plan architectural solution that today also meets the progressive increase in the average size of the works and the mutability of their nature - not only paintings and sculptures, but also installations and videos - which help to accommodate all types of experience and artistic artefact.
In conceiving and creating the interior space of the museum, it was decided to characterize the exhibition areas with a different use of color for each section.
The contemporary art section, characterized by the anthracite gray color, is completed with three-dimensional and wall-mounted plastic works together with video installations and sound installations by the artists: Salvatore Anelli, Fabrizio Cicero, Franco Flaccavento, Dionigi Mattia Gagliardi, Andrea Gallo, Federica Gonnelli, Max Marra , Paolo Migliazza, Assunta Mollo, Leila Mirzakhani, Tarcisio Pingitore, Giovanni Ronzoni.
The ethnographic section, highlighted by the rust red color, wants to give us back at the same time the tactile and visual sensation of the relationship that has always existed between man and nature; the bare earth which, transformed into a field is a place of production for sowing and harvesting, has always been at the center of the activities essential for the sustenance of life itself. This section of the museum collects various work tools forged by the millenary experience of man - which were once used, to facilitate work in the fields, by expert farmers in their role as producers of essential raw materials for the growth and nurturing the individual - making work easier. For these artifacts recovered from a distant world, a type of exhibition has been conceived and designed that fully highlights their current character as tools of not entirely common use, ennobling them in the display on high pedestals following the example of presentation. of archaeological finds, also once upon a time, in antiquity, objects of common use among the most elementary and used for carrying out normal domestic activities, for pouring wine and libations such as cantaros or Attic craters that still today arouse wonder for their handcrafted packaging.
The ethnographic section of the museum offers temporary exhibitions with themes related above all to the territory, the current one is the "Wheat" in all its forms which inspire the works of art created by the artists in residence exhibited in the contemporary art section.
The museum has hosted a series of cultural projects entitled TERRAĒ I and II artists in residence edition. TERRAĒ is a variously structured eclectic project that aims to intervene on the cognitive awareness of modern man by following the protean modalities of contemporary art actions. The interventions set up on the protection and enhancement of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, were based on the relationship between art and place. The actions and initiatives of the artists hosted on site spread over the entire municipal area of ​​Zumpano through diversified contemporary art acts that saw the architects grappling with issues related to the traditions rooted in the territory, aiming at full integration with the context.
If, on the one hand, the collection tells the story of ethnographic culture - with particular reference to what happened to the forms of social and cultural life in the territory of Zumpano and in the south up to less than a century ago - on the other it explores the present and hypothesizes the future through the inclusion of artists who respond with new works, commissions and donations to this historical-anthropological science. The path is not organized according to a chronological order or following lines of research or historicized groupings, but as a critical-thematic narrative, so that the works and documents generate a dialogue between potentially common languages ​​and practices of artists belonging to generations, formations and different origins. In this way, the MAE equips itself with a collection that is at the same time rooted in its territory and attentive to the dynamics of international research. As with an open ending, the cultural project is destined to continue over time to continue exploring the performative character that the collection exerts on the identity and functions of the museum itself.