There are lights and shadows in the way in which the world of museums has been allowed to deal with the health emergency that has hit us. On the one hand, their proactiveness in accepting the challenge of offering online content, in some cases even innovative and the result of considerable study, was commendable, with the aim of maintaining a link with an audience that has not been granted for a long time to go to these places. On the other hand, the unshakable decision of the government to leave the cultural institutes closed for a long time was a missed opportunity: the opportunity that is to put aside for a moment their, albeit important, function of attracting national and international tourism, and on the contrary to leverage their local vocation, thinking of specific projects for a public that is certainly more limited from a numerical point of view, but fundamental to activate long-term synergies with the territory.

Like the seismic movements that, while not emerging on the ground, continue to exist in the bowels of the earth, even art can never go out completely; man’s creative instinct is not stopped by pandemics, and indeed it is precisely in moments of crisis that he works with the most ardor, ready to tell our fears and our desires. The most experienced and shrewd museum curators know this, and continue to work waiting for art to return to where it belongs: among people.

And so last December, in full lockdown and with the museums still closed, the pompeiicommitment.org portal was inaugurated: more than a website, a “digital research center”, as it is defined in the press release issued by the Archaeological Park website, born within the Pompeii Commitment project. Archaeological subjects.

The idea was born a few years ago, in 2017, in the minds of Massimo Osanna, interim General Manager of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, and Andrea Viliani, then director of the Donna Regina Museum of Contemporary Art in Naples, and today Head and Curator of the CRRI-Castello di Rivoli Research Institute. The project, dedicated to contemporary art but with a strong connection with the history and culture preserved in the Pompeii Park, is divided into two phases: in the first, the protagonist will be the pompeiicommitment.org platform, where from December 2020 to December 2021 texts, images, audio and videos will be published by over fifty artists, curators, writers and international activists invited to participate in the project with their contributions. The second phase, on the other hand, will begin in 2021 and will aim at the establishment of a contemporary art collection in the Pompeii Archaeological Park: the works that will make it up will therefore be commissioned, produced and finally presented.

A project that was born virtual, but not intended as a substitute for a real presence that we cannot rely on for now, but by strongly believing in the potential and opportunities that digital today has to offer. There are many sections in which the Commitments will be collected, the contributions that will make up the project, which will tell about Pompeii, its history and its materials, with different approaches and devoted to integration and fruitful contamination between disciplines.

At the base of this project there are many intelligent intuitions on which it is worth dwelling on. First of all, the idea of ​​establishing a sort of “connection” between ancient and contemporary, an approach that is not really new to the discourse on art, and that in particular in the history of Naples, a city where the various “layers” of time coexist and dialogue, it has proved to be particularly successful. For example, it was one of Lucio Amelio’s intuitions, with the desire to create Terrae Motus, the collection of contemporary art, born following the earthquake that devastated Irpinia in 1980, specifically conceived to dialogue with the Bourbon palaces in which over the years, the Royal Palace of Caserta has been exhibited until it reaches its current location.

And it is a leitmotiv that reaches up to the present day, in the curatorial approaches of many interesting experiences; as shown, for example, by the exhibition, created in 2017 by the Madre Museum and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, which with a skilful game of references and quotations compared the works of the museum permanent collection, archaeological finds from Pompeii, and loaned works for the occasion, in an attempt to reconstruct the influence that not only the knowledge of the ancient world, but above all the imagination of Pompeii, has exercised on artists from all periods, as a metaphor for rebirth after destruction.

Another interesting aspect of the Pompeii Commitment project is the desire to work in such a way that a place of culture, an archaeological park to be exact, can be not only a place dedicated to the preservation of memory and the enjoyment of cultural heritage, but of true production of cultural goods and services, an “incubator” of those fundamental skills and experiences that are needed for artistic creation. It is precisely on the basis of this that the connection between ancient and contemporary of which we spoke earlier acquires a further meaning: we are not talking about a mere juxtaposition of works produced in different historical periods, but of a fruitful interaction aimed at generating fruitful repercussions on the present.

There are many reasons why the project seems particularly interesting and promising. First of all, because it is an initiative that both for its final goal and for the way it is structured, it categorically eschews the logic of the “big event” and of easy and immediate gain. The desire to generate knowledge and study, in addition to that of returning a new collection of contemporary art to Naples, means investing in a cultural asset with a long period of generation, which will bring real benefits to the area in the long term. Secondly, as we have already said, the Archaeological Park of Pompeii is reinterpreted as a true center of cultural production; the supporters of the project therefore believe in the potential of the Park to generate a positive impact on creativity, and that this can manifest itself in various forms of contemporary artistic-cultural production. Last but not least, the fundamental aspect of interdisciplinarity, wisely considered in the project: visibility, positive complexity, sharing of skills, all advantages that can arise from these fertile contaminations, and of which the territory could potentially be the first and most important beneficiary.

Stefano D’Alessandro

To know more:

https://pompeiicommitment.org/