Naples, the public can't visit MANN? Then it's MANN going to the city, here's how

If the public cannot go to the museum, the museum goes to the public. That’s why, during this holiday season, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN) has decided to tell its story on the streets of the city’s neighborhoods, with the initiative The MANN for the City. Starting Dec. 16, several initiatives will bring the museum to the inhabitants of the capital of Campania: first, on the podium of the Archeological Museum, the plates of the 2021 MANN calendar made by the Italian School of Comix will be reproduced. Then, in the Principe di Napoli Gallery, a number of totems will be installed depicting details of Dario Assisi and Riccardo Maria Cipolla’s successful exhibition Escape from the Museum, and this is thanks to the collaboration with the Heritage, Public Works and Youth Department, the Culture and Tourism Department, the Department of Common Goods and Urban Planning, and the Department of Commerce, Markets and Productive Activities of the City of Naples. Finally, the museum will also carry out an enhancement activity carried out with the network of Friends of the MANN Stores: the project was undertaken last summer, launching shared promotions with stores that are members of the Museum Shopping Center Consortium.

Let’s look at the individual initiatives in detail. As for the 2021 calendar, it will consist of twelve plates depicting the twelve labors of Hercules: the Italian School of Comix, as part of the university project Obvia(Out of boundaries viral art dissemination, with referee Professor Daniela Savy of the University degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”), has entrusted twelve cartoonists (Mario Teodosio, Francesco Filippini, Barbara Ansaldi, Paco Desiato, Alessandra Vitelli, Alessia Vivenzio, Carmelo Zagaria, Marino Guarnieri, Mario Testa, Paola Del Prete, Fabiana Fiengo, Marco Castiello) with the search for a creative synthesis between mythology and contemporaneity. Confirming therefore a path already put in place with the last editions of the MANN calendars, the School of Comics directed by Mario Punzo has found in the figure of Hercules a hero of our times, grappling with the great battles of the third millennium to defend humanity and the planet: a message that, during the Cvoid-19 pandemic, is grafted in coherence with the investigation of current events conducted by major MANN exhibitions such as Myth and Nature and Understanding Climate Change.

The twelve plates of the Comix calendar will be reproduced on the Museum’s building site cladding and, in the evening, will be illuminated by the building’s beams of light: a way of reminding us that, with a lesson conveyed from the past to the present, the values of courage, tenacity and imagination will be indispensable references for the coming year. With the calendar, the university project lines of OBVIA are also confirmed, which, for the past four years or so, has been accompanying MANN in a constant activity of dissemination and storytelling of its works declined in various art forms: in this case, the drawings of the School of Comix, with the iconography of Hercules, will “invade” Museum Square for the first time.

As for the initiative conceived for the Principe Gallery, here, on large totems arranged in a circular arrangement, details of the photomontages of Fuga dal Museo by Dario Assisi and Riccardo Maria Cipolla, the exhibition that, between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, had created, in the Sala del Toro Farnese of the MANN, an ironic fantasy game: the statues of the Archaeological Museum were in fact “transposed” to iconic places in the city of Naples and the Phlegrean coastline, as if they had come out of the institute’s premises to walk around the city. Now the exhibition itinerary focuses on the cross-reference between detail and complete work: in the Gallery, in fact, in 2X1m depictions, it will be possible to trace only a detail of the image. Then, the Amici Shops, located in the arterial streets bordering the MANN (via Pessina to Piazza Dante, via Costantinopoli, via Santa Teresa degli Scalzi, via Broggia, via Conte di Ruvo: for the list of participating businesses, visit the Museum’s website) will display the original work or its reproduction: to the customers of the business, a copy of the 2021 calendar of the Italian School of Comix will be donated.

Finally, on the subject of gifts, also for Christmas 2021, there will be no shortage of “OpenMANN” annual subscription promotion: on the website coopculture.it, the card will be purchasable, by January 31, at the reduced price of 10 euros for adults and 15 for families (two adults over 25). Slogan of the campaign will be Regalati un viaggio nella storia, with the wish to return to the museum in early 2021; symbol of the Christmas promotion, the female statue of Concordia augusta (from Pompeii, Edificio di Eumachia, 1st century AD): the sculpture, which will be included in the Campania Romana section of the MANN and was photographed in preview by Luigi Spina, holds a cornucopia. Of course, old subscribers will make up, when the museum reopens, the time not enjoyed due to the Coronavirus emergency.

“After the illumination of the facade, we are starting with the ’MANN for the city’ initiatives to spread, even physically, on the streets of the historic center of Naples, a message of beauty,” says MANN Director Paolo Giulierini. “We believe that coloring our streets with the signs of art means regaining a strong sense of community around us. In particular, within the framework of an agreement activated on an experimental basis last August with the Museum Shopping Center Consortium, which gave rise to an initial nucleus of 40 ’Friendly Shops’ of the Mann, a program of activities aimed at increasingly strengthening the identity of the area, which has always been called a ’museum,’ its attractiveness and quality of life has been defined. A commitment that for the enhancement of the Galleria Principe di Napoli and in general for the construction of the cultural district, which has already seen for some years among the protagonists the Mann together with the municipal administration and the business network Galleria Principe di Napoli and it seemed to us a duty to implement in an extremely difficult period for everyone. The initiatives put in place want to testify to affection and closeness to the commercial realities of the area and especially to artisan stores, to the so-called proximity and family-run stores, in the sign of a territorial identity that today more than ever must be preserved in order to soon return to growth and bear fruit in terms of economic revitalization.”

Naples, the public can't visit MANN? Then it's MANN going to the city, here's how

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