The Museo Interdisciplinare Regionale (MuMe), or Regional Museum of Messina (Italian - Museo regionale interdisciplinare di Messina), is an art museum located on the northern coast of the city of Messina, Sicily, Italy. MuMe illustrates the development of art and culture in Messina from the 12th to the 18th centuries, with outstanding figures such as the renowned artists Andrea della Robbia, Antonello da Messina, Girolamo Alibrandi, Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), and Polidoro da Caravaggio.
Until 2017 it was housed in the former Barbera-Mellinghoff silk-mill, a late 19th-century building chosen for it after the 1908 Messina earthquake. Since 2017 it has been housed in a nearby complex designed in the 1970s.Regional Museum messina.info
Building The building housing the museum was originally the Barbera-Mellinghoff spinning-mill, a late 19th-century construction chosen after the great earthquake of 1908 to be the site of the future museum, which was refurbished and finally opened in 1922. Over the years the building has been considerably restructured in order to guarantee the exhibits the best possible conditions for their preservation; the last major work was carried out in the 1980s. A new large complex of buildings near the present site was completed in 2010s.
Collections The original collections came from the Museo Civico. After the earthquake in 1908 these were expanded by the addition of paintings, sculptures and precious decorative works from damaged or destroyed buildings, thus creating a collection of paintings and sculptures by internationally known and local artists, together with a variety of other objets d'art.
Exhibition The museum was organized on historicistic principles: each area contains the most important works of the same period, regardless of their typological class.
Rooms 1-2 works of the Norman-Swabian period Rooms 3-4 sculptures and paintings of the 15th and 16th century Room 4 "Saint Gregory Polyptych" by Antonello da Messina Rooms 5-8 Paintings, sculptures, funerary monuments and works of decorative art of the 16th century Room 6 "Scylla" by G. A. Montorsoli Rooms 9-11 17th-century art and culture Room 10 Caravaggio works Room 12 18th-century art and culture in Messina Room 13 "The treasury" silversmithry, cribs, church ornaments, pottery
History Origins
The first nucleus for the museum's collection came with various private collections of conservative taste. First opened in 1806 as the Museo civico peloritano by the Reale Accademia Peloritana "to end the despoliation of art", its formation was the idea of its first director Carmelo La Farina. It housed the Alojsio, Arenaprimo, Ciancialo, Grosso-Cacopardo and Carmisino family collections as well as a collection of 14th- to 18th-century paintings owned by the city's senate, which also part-funded its running costs.
It was initially based on via Rovere, near the Archivio degli atti notarili, before being moved to former university buildings, then (after its massive expansion from the collections of religious corporations suppressed by the 1866 liquidation laws) in 1884 to a building on via Peculio Frumentario and from 1891 to 1908 to the former monastery of San Gregorio.
The site of the former monastery
In the rooms of the former monastery, following acquisitions and hereditary legacies, a copious amount of heterogeneous materials were formed and sedimented: in addition to the movables and objects of cultural use, coming from the ecclesiastical heritage, and the oil paintings from various eras and schools, also a rich numismatic collection, typologically classified into Mamertine, Greek and Roman Republican coins from the 2nd to the 1st century, mostly coming from the collection of Grosso-Cacopardo and his heirs purchased and donated to the Museum by the Municipality of Messina.
Also noteworthy are: the collection of seventy-four enamelled maiolica vases with reliefs – made between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the following century, by the factories of Urbino, Casteldurante and Faenza – coming from the pharmacy of the civic hospital of Messina, a collection of arms, the complete collection of the Gazzetta Britannica, a newspaper from the time of Joachim Murat, various manuscripts, five Latin codices probably coming from the Benedictine Library destroyed in 1848 and, finally, a large number of engravings by Alojsio Iuvara, by Raimondi, parchments from 1200 to 1500, sarcophagi and marble sculptures from various periods.
This necessarily incomplete list of the collections contained in the Civic Museum, in addition to being justified by the loss of much material in the 1908 earthquake, also tends to underline what is peculiar to most post-unification Italian civic museums, that is, their functional specificity as places of storage and collection with essentially protective and representative purposes.
The Municipal Commission The need for a more organic and scientific organization of the material emerged in the founding act of a municipal commission that met in 1890. This commission, which included Arenaprimo and Antonio Picciotto, the future director of the museum, among its members, drafted an initial report that same year, outlining the criteria adopted for the organization of the art gallery.
After considering the aesthetic value and the notable quantity of paintings from the Messina school, the report highlights the need for "this school to be represented with all its characteristic features and in its entirety in its development, gathering all the elements that are useful in revealing its artists, whether fellow citizens or foreigners, and in all its periods of splendor and decadence." Since it would be deplorable "if the Messina art gallery were to be proud only for the panels of the famous school of the Antonimi," it is necessary that "alongside the works of those greats, for reasons of art and history, there must be those of the mediocre, of those who suffered from their lack of talent, or who, while giving proof of it, were always overwhelmed by the bad taste of the era."
The exhibition criteria
It is highly significant that, along with these exhibition criteria – which not only concern paintings of greater aesthetic value, but also take into account works classified as mediocre or from historical periods considered decadent (such as, for example, the Baroque taste of the 17th century) – the document highlights the educational and cultural function of the museum which "rather than focusing on curiosity with continuous links to teaching, must return to true educational utility, offering us, through monuments, paintings, and utensils, a complete and genuine image of the culture, art, and life of previous centuries." Selective criteria, however, resurface in the evaluation of contemporary art and genre painting. The former should be displayed "distinct and segregated," the latter so that it "forms a separate section."
Thus the suspicion resurfaces that the very display of works considered minor, a criterion in itself very noble, rather than deference to the historical rigor of documentation and respect for the work of art itself, hides with intellectualistic subtlety of the 19th century, the less noble intent, of making the "major works" stand out more; proof of this is that for the masterpieces "a so-called hall of honor will be established", a privilege and prerogative that still, in some museums, tend to separate and distinguish the excellent works.
La Corte-Cailler is also responsible for a manuscript work on the museum, as well as a series of articles published in various editions from 1902 to 1903 in the Archivio Storico Messina, in which he reports on new acquisitions and the definitive arrangement of the hall of honor. In the manuscript, the author, after some historical notes, describes the existing rooms and sets out, from a design perspective, a long series of works to be carried out for the construction of new rooms in which to accommodate the materials lying in storage and transfer the marble works still accumulated in the University premises.
The manuscript – published, as mentioned, in the magazine (under the heading "news") and in part in the daily newspaper Il Paese in 1908 – constitutes the first scientific and systematic work on the works contained in the museum, for which it includes the cataloguing card with particular attention to the paintings. It also provides biographical information on the artists for a total of one hundred and one biographies.
The lack of staff, the cramped spaces, and the overcrowding of materials, however, remained unsolved problems until, as La Corte-Cailler reports, the superintendent of museums and works of art of Sicily, Antonio Salinas, himself, outraged by the neglect in which the museum had been left by the Municipal Administration, signed a forceful protest to the Ministry of Education in 1907. A commission was then convened to study a permanent arrangement and the possibility of moving it to another location.
Earthquake and recovery The rebuilding plans were cut short by the 1908 earthquake, in which the museum collapsed and some artworks were lost.
However, the renovation plans were thwarted by the disastrous earthquake of 1908, which caused the museum's collapse and the loss of several works. The exceptional nature of the situation, the improvisation, and the urgency of the intervention led to a selective approach to the recovery and first aid operations. The major works were placed indoors, while the others were placed in makeshift shelters and on the esplanade.
The need for rapid reconstruction was immediately felt and in 1909 the Inter-ministerial Commission, in a ranking of public works to be built, placed the Civic Museum in fifth place.
For two years, from 1909 to 1911, the recovery work of the collapsed material continued and was collected in rented warehouses in the area destined to house the new museum – the esplanade of San Salvatore dei Greci –, in the general in the warehouses of the Customs House and among the ruins of the church of Santa Maria Alemanna.
To much of this material, consisting of architectural and decorative fragments, the public authorities – as Superintendent Rao clearly denounces in a 1915 report – give a significant contribution "with the systematic demolition of monumental parts deemed a danger to public safety, even where they could have been saved, the art material found in the Museum's Depot comes either from the recovery made from the rubble, or from the demolition and dismantling of monumental buildings that could not be preserved".
In a letter dated December 28, 1912, Salinas commissioned the architect Francesco Valenti to draw up a project for the construction of a new museum in the Salvatore dei Greci area.
The project signed by Valenti and approved by Salinas included, in summary: a courtyard with the reconstruction of the cloister of San Domenico, two courtyards with elements of the cloister of San Francesco, a portico with columns from the University, chapels reconstructed with mixed marble from the churches of Santa Teresa, Carmine, San Paolo, Santa Caterina di Valverde, San Nicolò and the Oratorio della Pace, a chapel reconstructed with marble elements from the church of San Gregorio, doors from the University and Grano palaces, the churches of Santa Maria di Valverde, Santa Maria di Basicò and Santa Maria La Scala, original windows from the church of Montevergine and the Grano and University palaces, small windows from medieval buildings, etc.
Presented to the Superior Council of Public Works, the project raised some doubts of an exclusively economic nature, so much so that the superintendent of monuments of Palermo, who succeeded Salinas, Rao, re-presented it in January 1915, sharing its design approach.