Silvia Dell'Orso Prize 2017 goes to Abbadia San Salvatore's Mercury Places

It is the artistic research group Studio Azzurro of Milan that, thanks to its project for the creation of multimedia apparatus for the museum I luoghi del mercurio in Abbadia San Salvatore (Siena), won the 2017 edition of the Silvia Dell’Orso Prize, Italy’s highest award for the popularization of cultural heritage (and whose roll of honor also includes the name of Finestre sull’Arte, winner in 2015). The museum is part of the Parco Museo Minerario in Abbadia San Salvatore, and the layout designed by Studio Azzurro intends to bring visitors into the center of the historical events, mining culture and the territorial and social arrangement of Mount Amiata with a real script that makes the public live a narrative of life experience of the mine.

The scientific committee of the prize named after the memory of journalist and essayist Silvia Dell’Orso (Milan, 1956 - 2009), composed this year of Annalisa Cicerchia, Pietro Clemente, Marisa Dalai Emiliani, Francesco Erbani, Mario Turci and Paolo Cavaglione, wanted to award the prize to Studio Azzurro’s project for “the ability to transmit a social, physical, material and cultural memory of the territory, in its different dimensions and to create living relationships between the past and the present, to render a sense of the dignity of work and sacrifice, and to make the museum a place in which one recognizes oneself and in which one learns.”

Studio Azzurro was founded in 1982 by Fabio Cirifino, Paolo Rosa and Leonardo Sangiorgi and now has several employees to its credit: since then, the group has been investigating the poetic and expressive possibilities of multimedia languages by developing experimental works but also outreach projects for museums and exhibitions. The project developed for the museum The Places of Mercury, which opened in 2016, includes an installation that uses objects from the collection as part of a set design that immerses the visitor in the reality of the mine for an experience in eight “scenes,” complete and engaging, with mercury as the main thread of the story.

To the winners, in addition to the prize, goes an endowment of 3,000 euros. The committee then granted two special mentions: to Antonella Gioli, Sara Bruni, Lorenzo Carletti and Marina Sabatini for the educational project Nel/Col/From Livorno’s Museo Civico Fattori: Works, Routes, Links (a set of publications to illustrate the museum in schools through different thematic routes and educational sheets, which has already won the Ministry of Education’s national competition Educational Projects in Museums ) and to the Association “Amici del Monumentale di Milano” for the books La piccola città - Il Monumentale di Milano (Jaca Book) and Il Monumentale di Milano - Un museo a cielo aperto by Carla De Bernardi and Lalla Fumagalli. Two exemplary popularization projects, one aimed at schools, and the other at citizenship, to discover an important artistic reality of Milan.

The Silvia Dell’Orso Prize, now in its eighth edition, is promoted by theSilvia Dell’Orso Cultural Association and constitutes, stresses President Paolo Cavaglione, “the most representative moment of the action that places popularization at the center of our activities. The Silvia Dell’Orso Cultural Association is the only one, in Italy, that promotes and encourages proper popularization as an indispensable tool to form in citizens awareness and sensitivity to their cultural heritage.”

The award ceremony will be held on Friday, December 15, at the Banca Prossima Salon in Largo Bortolo Belotti in Milan. For more information, to learn about the committee’s motivations, to learn more about the winning projects and to browse through the award’s roll of honor, it is possible to visit www.a-sdo.org, the official website of the Silvia Dell’Orso Association, where one can also find all the information about the Milanese association’s activities.

Silvia Dell'Orso Prize 2017 goes to Abbadia San Salvatore's Mercury Places

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