20.06.2012 / Arts & Culture
Everyday life on display
Some time ago, we spoke about Museum, a gallery in New York City where ordinary objects unveal their extraordinary role by being displayed like works of art. Well, we just discovered a place with a similar concept in Italy.
It’s called Museo del Quotidiano (Museum of everyday life) and it is dedicated to the memory of its late founder Ettore Guatelli, a primary school teacher and a self-taught intellectual as well as a collector of things and stories and a visionary museographer. The son of a farmer, Guatelli loved to collect and exhibit everyday objects to describe the life and working conditions of the workers by spectacularly displaying those objects on the walls.
Hammers, pliers, shovels, scissors, barrels… Up to this day, these objects have preserved the imprint of the people who used them day after day until they became part of their being. 
Yet, they are not displayed according to a traditional teaching standard, with reconstructed interiors and pedantic explanations; on the contrary, they fill the walls with simple geometric patterns that seem to be inspired by the avant-garde artistic movements of the twentieth century.
But there’s more to it all than just the aesthetic and material aspects, because the objects on display at Museo Guatelli do not simply bear witness to the work; they are evidence of the stories shared by men and women in a rural era that looks incredibly remote to us.
These simple things also contain the imagery of those people, their memories and their tales.
An immaterial heritage which, in its very own way, is as precious as the paintings in a major art museum.
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