Luca BOMBARDIERI1 / Anna Margherita JASINK2 / Panaiotis KRUKLIDIS2
(1Università di Torino / 2Università di Firenze, Italy)
Abstract:
Bronze Age Aegean and Cypriote Collections are an important patrimony of the National Archaeological Museum of Florence, arising from old Museum donations, acquisitions and exchanges dating back to the end of the 1800-beginning of 1900. Several rearrangements of the location of these collections occurred, following the history of the Museum and the flood of 1966. As a consequence, many of the findings were conserved in the Museum storerooms and were not accessible to the visitors.
This project is addressed to a full recovery of the archaeological materials through a multiple approach. First step has been the complete systematic study of the material assemblages. As a second step, dedicated exhibitions of selected repertoires were organized in the Museum exhibition galleries and beyond them, in unconventional locations within the city of Florence. The positive feedback of these exhibitions raised up a new interest for the collections and paved the way toward further new initiatives. The traditional exhibitions have been flanked by the promotion of a virtual, interactive gallery (MUSINT) concerning objects not only kept in the Florentine Museum but also in other Tuscany Galleries, in order to offer a wider picture both for specialists and for general public. Along a virtual chronological, geographical and thematic itineraries, the visitor has the opportunity of different choices to explore sections and artefacts according to his own interest.
Both the traditional exhibitions and the interactive virtual gallery aim to ‘open’ and ‘drive’ the collections from the Museum storerooms to the Town. We believe that the proposed approaches can be easily extended to other collections to reinforce their informative value and enhance the attractive potentialities of our cultural archaeological patrimony.
Keywords: National Museum Florence; Aegean and Cypriote Archaeological Collections