Treviso, the Salce Collection will have its permanent home from December

On December 5, 2020, the spaces of the Church of Santa Margherita will be inaugurated in Treviso, where the National Museum Collezione Salce will find its proper and definitive home. This is Italy’s most important collection of affiches, numbering almost 50,000 pieces to date.

To place this remarkable collection in a suitable home had begun to be thought about in the 1950s, In 2011 the Ministry of Cultural Heritage had decided to leave the collection in its city of origin, Treviso, reserving for it two state-owned buildings, which at the time were in a state of neglect: the medieval church of Santa Margherita and the centrally located building adjacent to the church of San Gaetano. The former intended to physically house the collection, the latter as a space for restoration workshops and exhibition venue.

The renovation of the two buildings (including the Church of San Gaetano), their adaptation, the creation of the technological vault where the 50,000 posters are stored, the fitting out, and the arrangement of outdoor spaces required a total investment of about 7 million euros, financed by MiBACT, with a contribution from the Veneto Region. The work, on both buildings, was designed and directed by technicians from the Veneto Regional Museums Directorate of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism.

The San Gaetano building was inaugurated on May 27, 2017, and consists of four floors that accommodate service spaces (reception, bookshop, infopoint) and specially designed exhibition surfaces for graphic materials. By scientific choice and for conservation reasons, materials from the Salce Collection are displayed here on a rotating basis as part of monographic or thematic temporary exhibitions. With the museum, it is also possible to visit the church of San Gaetano, a Knights Templar building that preserves Gaetano Callido’s 18th-century organ, among the most valuable instruments in the Veneto region.

As mentioned, the Santa Margherita venue will instead be inaugurated on December 5, 2020: the spaces of the thirteenth-century temple will become the true “home” of the Salce Collection; the nearly 50,000 posters collected and donated to the state by Nando Salce or from subsequent acquisitions will be displayed here.

The new museum will make extensive use of new technologies, both to introduce visitors to the theme of the posters’ creation and to introduce them to the visually impaired, as well as, most importantly, to make the analysis of each poster in the Collection accessible to scholars through a computerized system.

A large monographic exhibition on Renato Casaro, the last of the great movie poster artists, was chosen as the first exhibition at the opening; the exhibition curated by Roberto Festi, Eugenio Manzato with Maurizio Baroni, will also be developed at the San Gaetano complex and at the Museo Civico di Santa Caterina.

Treviso, the Salce Collection will have its permanent home from December

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