Pistoia, presented SIMUP - Sistema Museale Pistoiese, new network of 11 museums

The Sistema Museale Pistoiese (SIMUP), an institute that brings together eleven public and private museums in Pistoia and its province, was presented today in Pistoia with the aim of networking them in order to enhance the cultural heritage, enhance the variety of the realities of its places, support cooperation, identify common and wide-ranging strategic systems, develop an overall vision of the Pistoia territory, and grow.

Resulting from the work of the Permanent Table set up to draft Pistoia’s Strategic Plan for Culture, SIMUP includes the Museo Civico d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Comunale in Pistoia, the Museo dello Spedale del Ceppo in Pistoia, the Museo del Novecento e del Contemporaneo in Palazzo Fabroni and the Casa-studio Fernando Melani (in the ownership of the Municipality of Pistoia), the Museum of the Ancient Palace of Bishops, the Collections of Palazzo de’ Rossi, Palazzo Buontalenti and the Museum of San Salvatore (in the ownership of Pistoia Musei/Fondazione Caript), the Galeotti Civic Museum and the Libero Andreotti Plaster Collection (in the ownership of the Municipality of Pescia), and the Pescia Paper Museum (in the ownership of the association of the same name). Officially established on April 28, 2021 in accordance with Tuscan Regional Law No. 21/2010, SIMUP is rooted in the broader context of the Strategic Plan for Culture of the city and province of Pistoia, the first and to date only Tuscan Strategic Plan for Culture at the provincial level, created following the experience of Pistoia Italian Capital of Culture 2017.

Under the leadership of Monica Preti, Director/Scientific Coordinator of the Pistoia Museum System and Director of Pistoia Musei, supported in turn by the organs of the System - the Steering Committee, the Technical-Scientific Committee, the Lead Partner, responsible for administrative management - SIMUP aims to enhance the variety of territorial realities, acting as a propeller of new possibilities for knowledge and growth. The Pistoia Museum System intends to tell the multiplicity of Pistoia’s stories, which, interwoven over time and places, have given and give life to the uniqueness of its character. “Believing firmly in the key role of the museum in the cultural and social growth of communities,” reads a note, “this organization feels the need to to develop collaborations with public and private entities capable of strengthening, on the one hand, its social function of museums and, on the other hand, to lead to the realization of original system educational proposals, designed and structured to reach different audiences and to make museums stand out in the territory, in search of new and original reasons to visit, capable of increasing the interest, awareness and sense of belonging of visitors.”

SIMUP makes use of a base of identifying tools created thanks to the resources of the entities involved and with the contribution of the Region of Tuscany received through the call for proposals dedicated to museum systems 2022: a website in Italian and English versions, a coordinated proposal of visit itineraries in Italian and English versions, a SIMUP Card, a leaflet in Italian and English versions, a coordinated graphic kit, a promotional video modulated for different types of use, with related English version, a Facebook profile, an Instagram profile, and coordinated graphics for the creation of signage elements outside the museums.

Theoctagon, a recurring shape in the architectural geometries of Pistoia’s main monuments, was chosen for thegraphic identity - developed by the Fuorisede communication agency - of the Pistoia Museum System and encloses the letters of SIMUP: independent, each circumscribed in its own space, but at the same time, supported by each other, in an ideal chain that connects them, corroborating their meaning. The sequence of modules concludes with a dynamic final element, looking outward, suggesting new perspectives for development. The letter P in the final element of the logo suggests and evokes not only the city and the entire territory of Pistoia, but also the stories of People, Historical Palaces, Projects, Events of the Past and Present, Paths and numerous other suggestions that are constantly evolving, just as the life of the territory that the System represents is evolving.

Thanks to the contribution of the Region of Tuscany, a joint educational project dedicated to children who will visit SIMUP museums with their families has also been designed. At the entrance of the museums, children will receive a special kit to be used independently in the visit itinerary, different in each facility, which will allow them to enjoy a personal experience of research, understanding and deepening of particular elements of the collections. A special passport will accompany the children who will complete the tour of experiences dedicated to them by visiting all the museums involved in the proposal. The details of this special initiative, the first of the educational projects devised by SIMUP, will be presented in the early months of the new year at the Libero Andreotti Plaster Collection in Pescia.

SIMUP is also pursuing a two-year project (2022 and 2023) of electronic cataloging and digitization of its museums’ holdings financed by call for proposals No. 10/2021 of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia e Pescia entitled The Memory of the Future: the Pistoia Museum System Towards the Construction of a Digital Identity. The results of the work, aimed at charting a course for the protection, preservation and enhancement of Pistoia’s museum assets, starting with those belonging to SIMUP, will be presented at the end of next year.

For 2023 SIMUP also proposes an articulated program that includes: the design of new common visiting routes that can trace a common thread among the museums’ collections; the presentation of the educational project dedicated to children and the design of a new educational project aimed at a particular target audience; and the presentation of the benefits of the SIMUP Card; the development of dialogue and the search for collaborations with the other museums and cultural institutes in the Pistoia and Tuscan territory (Pistoia museums with regulations or about to have them, state museums in the territory, Fondazione Musei Senesi, Uffizi Galleries, Permanent Table of Culture of the Province of Pistoia and all potential subjects interested in joining the System or collaborating with it); the initiation of an interlocution with the main Pistoia trade associations, in order to stimulate, through the dissemination of the System’s promotional activities, the emergence of a growing interest in possible forms of collaboration between SIMUP and the sector of productive activities; the enhancement of the museum’s social responsibility through the first step in the path of UNICEF Museum Friend of Girls, Children and Adolescents recognition, identified in the adoption of the Museum Policy, a document that will unite UNICEF’s intentions with those of all the museums in the System.

Pistoia, presented SIMUP - Sistema Museale Pistoiese, new network of 11 museums

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