Kicking off the 2nd European Friends of Museums Day and the 21st National FIDAM Day

On October 13, 2024, the II European Friends of Museums Day will be celebrated in conjunction with the XXI National FIDAM Day, an important reason to promote and enhance the fundamental role of museums and their supporters in the dissemination of culture and artistic heritage. On this occasion, volunteers registered with the associations that are part of the Italian Federation of Friends of Museums organize independently and free of charge a series of cultural events of various kinds, including lectures, talks, conferences, concerts and guided tours, thus helping to make cultural heritage accessible and usable to an increasingly wide public. The event, now in its 21st edition in Italy, has recently taken on a European dimension. FIDAM, Italian Federation of Friends of Museums, which is the creator of the event, and has a long and established organizational tradition has become the ambassador and coordinator of the export of the Friends of Museums Day experience, to an increasing number of EU member states. A first encroachment of the FIDAM National Day took place in 2022, with other European countries joining in. The 2024 edition sees the national federations of: Italy, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Luxembourg and Portugal, recently joined by the Czech Republic, all part of the worldwide network of the World Federation of Friends of Museum whose national president, Italo Scaietta, interviewed a few months ago by Finestre Sull’Arte - What Friends of Museums Do. Interview with FIDAM President Italo Scaietta, recently assumed the presidency.

The 2024 edition of European Day has received the endorsement of the 7 aforementioned Member States (and the dozens of internal associations of each National federation). In Italy, 44 associations have joined, from the Bradamante Association of Teglio, Sondrio, to the Friends of the Archaeological Park of Marsala. Contrary to our tradition of assigning a specific theme to guide shared reflection, the 2024 edition of the Day does not have a defined subject since it aims to celebrate and promote the figure of the Friends of Museums and the dedication they reserve to cultural heritage by devoting themselves to it. The choice, concerted with the representatives of the European Federations, makes it free for the Associations to interpret the theme with the highest degree of originality, according to their various possibilities and aspirations.

The suggestion was taken up by the Friends of the Pilotta in Parma, those of the Carrara Academy in Bergamo or the Friends of the Museums of Messina, who will conduct guided tours of the Frederician Rufo Ruffo Castle in Scaletta Zanclea, exceptionally open for the occasion. The Friends of Vol terra Museums also tell the story of their 20-year association with the Guarnacci Etruscan Museum of Volterra, which opens to the city with free thematic tours dedicated to different types of audiences conducted and curated by members. The Friends of Palazzo Te and the Mantovani Museums, in addition to dedicating a meeting to the memory of the late art critic Claudio Cerritelli, and conducting member-led tours of the Goffredo Bellini Museum are organizing a round table discussion that is significantly titled Institutions, Cultural Heritage and Volunteerism. The latter brings forward, on a day aimed at highlighting the collective effects of the passion that volunteers lavish on everyone’s museums, a strand of strategic actions dear to the Friends and to FIDAM; that of seeking synergies with local institutions aimed at promoting the enhancement of heritage. The Friends of the Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria, on the other hand, will present themselves with a conference to the city community with a review of past activity and a presentation of the future program. TheBradamante Association of Teglio is also proposing a Study Day and round table dedicated to the role played by cultural associations as a link between museum institutions, the public and the territory, capable of triggering structured forms of support and enhancement of cultural heritage and stimulating in the population the feeling of belonging to a community. Another interpretative strand of the passion that volunteers devote to their museums can be identified in the events involving restorations promoted with the Associations’ own contribution; the events organized by the Friends of the Museums of Livorno and Ferrara relate to this. Starting from the assumption that “to restore is to revive the work,” the Friends of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum are also organizing a “live” guided tour of the restoration of one of the symbolic masterpieces preserved at the museum: the Lady by Piero del Pollaiolo, which will be inaugurated a few days before October 13. The Venetian Friends will also present a work of art restored by them: a dress that belonged to Queen Margherita kept, together with other precious pieces contained in the deposits of the Museum of Palazzo Mocenigo. TheSacha Caprianorum Association of Sustinente presents to the community the figure of Marquis Federico Cavriani, an honorary member, who recently passed away by means of an artistic dissertation on the restoration work of theOratory of the Most Holy Crucifix of the noble Cavriani family first restoration project curated by Sacha Caprianorum (Sustinente) and the founding event from which the Association took its cue. Similarly, the Friends of the Civic Museums of Verona organize guided tours by reservation at the Castelvecchio Museum, starting with the birth of the association 30 years ago to finance the restoration of the Northeast Tower, thanks to the contribution of its first president and founder Giacomo Galtarossa. The Friends of the Ettore Pomarici Santomasi Foundation of Gravina in Puglia, like the Friends of Sacha Caprianorum, also present the passion and patronage of the a noble Pomarici Santomasi family to the citizenry by means of historical-artistic storytelling actor interventions that open the palace, historical documents and art collection to citizens. The Friends of Lecco’s Monuments and Territory will present to the community the new iron sculpture by Bruno Biffi that they donated to the Abegg Silk Museum in Garlate. The Friends of the Correale Terranova Museum in Sorrento will also celebrate the association’s first 14 years of activity. The Friends of the Royal Palace of Caserta also take the opportunity of European Day to celebrate the first decade of activity with the testimony of the various directors who have succeeded each other from 2014 to the present while the Friends of Villa Litta celebrate with an exhibition the work of those who have enhanced and preserved, in 30 years of activity, a precious historical heritage.

The Friends of the Agostino Pepoli Museum of Trapani also take the occasion of European Day to look back on the Association’s 16 years of existence by tracing a state of the art of what has been done to enhance it and setting future goals while their younger fellow citizens of the Friends of the San Rocco Museum celebrate their first three years of enthusiastic and prolific activity. Other events take the Friends and citizens out of the museums, to walk around the city, as in the case of the tabernacles on which the devotions of the Friends of the Florentine Museums are directed, or in that of the marble works that enthuse the Friends of the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara. There are many events dedicated to young people among them that of Amici dei Musei Fiorentini Didattica, which will use the narrative voice of the Mugnone River and its bank to lead an unprecedented narrative of the city, or that of the Friends of Brindisi Museums who will proclaim the winner among the students participating in the drawing competition announced in the context of the previous edition by proposing reflections on the didactics of museum spaces. A different target audience has the Friends of the private Carlo Bilotti Museum who propose a guided tour dedicated to the under 40s occasion apt to receive constructive feedback from this target audience less frequent among museum visitors and, even more, among the Friends of Museums. Other members celebrate a passion for a specific figure such as the Friends of Matilda of Canossa who dedicate their Day and activities to the Magna Comitissa. Often it is about an artist, as in the case of the Friends of Sicilian Museums and Monuments who dedicate their event to the extraordinary openings of the Palermitan oratories of the sculptor and stucco artist Giacomo Serpotta or as in the case of the poet Francesco Petrarch to whom the Friends of Padua Museums and Monuments dedicate a cultural and literary pilgrimage that from the house-museum in Arquà touches various places of the poet. It will be a Saint in the case of the Friends of the Museums of Naples, obviously Gennaro, who will visit the precious Treasure Museum. At the same Neapolitan association, the Junior section is organizing a guided tour dedicated to children at the Villa Floridiana ceramics museum. Other events will be dedicated to music, such as the one proposed by the Friends of Pavia Museums, who are organizing conversations on nineteenth-century melodrama and its relationship with painting, guided tours and in music, in the Quadreria of the Civic Museums of the Castle. The walk offered by the Friends of the Monumental Cemetery of Milan narrates the passion and lives of various artists starting with visits to their tombs, which are often themselves works of art.

There is no shortage of events that have interpreted passion with a biophilic and ecologist declination, such as those proposed by the Friends of the Capodimonte Museum and Real Bosco, which offer an itinerary dedicated to the main achievements promoted by the Association including some interventions for the repopulation and conservation of flora. The event by the Friends of the Museums of Vercelli also places emphasis on the floral element and does so through the medium of thematic itinerary visiting the works of the Brera Art Gallery. Adding further passion to the event is sharing the experience with local Friends of the Pinacoteca who will welcome and accompany Vercellians to “their” museum. The Friends of ’Porta dell’Umbria’ Museums and Monuments also propose an original thematic visit with a botanical-pomological subject to the Prometheus Room of the Bufalini Castle in San Giustino, emphasizing the role the noble family played in promoting acclimation and selection of new species in the 16th century. Entomological is the passion intended by theFriends of the Monuments, Museums and Landscape for the City of Vicenza and Province, who on October 13 will present the illustrated volume Passion for Coleoptera, which with various qualified contributions documents the exhibition An Inordinate Passion for Coleoptera that was on display from June 2023 to June 2024 at the Naturalistic Archaeological Museum in Vicenza. The Friends of Taranto with their Anticipation lecture on the upcoming National Conference will also introduce the environmental issues that will be explored from the Oct. 8-10 Study Days on Museums, Landscapes, Environment and Sustainability.

The full program of the European Friends of Museums Day 2024 is at the link.

Image: Milan, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum

Kicking off the 2nd European Friends of Museums Day and the 21st National FIDAM Day

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