During next week, from June 7 to 13, and as part of the Museum Week 2021, we want to introduce our followers to the different museums participating in SPICE. In this sense, through a series of scheduled posts shared daily by SPICE social media accounts (Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn), we will disseminate interesting information about our museums, their collection and the case studies being developed within SPICE in each of them.
Do you want to know them? Keep reading!
@IMMAIreland is Ireland’s National Cultural Institution for Modern and Contemporary Art. IMMA’s diverse and ambitious programme comprises exhibitions, commissions, and projects by leading Irish and international artists, as well as a rich engagement and learning programme which provides audiences of all ages the opportunity to connect with contemporary art and unlock their creativity. IMMA attracts an average of half a million visitors a year and is sited in the historic site and grounds of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin.
IMMA was established in 1990 as Ireland’s first national institution for the presentation and collection of modern and contemporary art. IMMA is housed in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (RHK), the finest 17th-century building in Ireland, founded in 1684 as a home for retired soldiers and continued in that use for almost 250 years. RHK is the oldest classical building in Ireland and was based on Les Invalides in Paris, with a formal facade and a large, elegant courtyard.
IMMA is home to the National Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, started in 1990 and now numbering over 3,500 artworks by Irish and international artists. This national resource is made available through exhibitions at IMMA and other venues nationally and internationally, engagement and learning programmes and digital resources.
The museum works with many different community groups in a variety of ways, from guided tours to dedicated workshops, also leads the way in dementia-inclusive arts programming.
IMMA’s case study aims to support groups who are less able to visit the museum physically, such as asylum seekers and children with serious illnesses, to access collections and share their own perspectives, both online and in the museum. Participants will be encouraged to think about universal, personal themes such as family to make interconnections across groups.
The Design Museum Helsinki (@DesignmuseoFI) is the national specialist museum of Finnish design. The museum researches, collects, stores and documents design, and displays it both in Finland and in touring exhibitions abroad. The Design Museum is an international meeting place for design, inviting people to learn about, to experience and enjoy design. We think that design belongs to everyone. The Design Museum promotes design learning for all ages and develops actively design education for children and young people.
Design Museum was established by the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design in 1873 as the study collection of the local design school. Since 1979, the museum has been located in the Kaartinkaupunki district in central Helsinki in the historical building of the Brobergska Samskolan high school (architect Gustav Nyström 1895). The museum became an independent foundation in 1989 and since 1993, it has acted as national specialist museum of design.
Design Museum’s large and multi-faceted collections illustrate the history and development of applied art and design in Finland. The collection contains over 75 000 objects, 45 000 drawings, 125 000 images and an index of designers with information on over 1000 designers. The biggest number of objects are products of the Finnish design industries: glass of Iittala, porcelain of Arabia and fashion and prints of Marimekko. Browse the collection here: https://collection.designmuseum.fi/fi/.
The Design Museum works with many communities locally and nationally, offering a variety of services. We collaborate widely with designers, design schools and design industry in all our activities, from exhibitions to workshops and events. And we also co-create design learning activities in an international network of design professionals and educators. The A&DO - the Learning Centre for Architecture and Design is a joint project with the Museum of Finnish Architecture aiming at a permanent, nationally operating centre for learning.
The Finnish case study, realized with the Aalto University, will address senior citizens, asylum seekers and people living far from the museum’s services. With a touring Pop-Up Design Museum, we hope to engage people to share their personal ideas and interpretations of design heritage and Finnish culture. Our aim is to provoke understanding and contributions across family generations and geographical communities. The activities and tools will be co-designed with experts and end-users, for example in Helsinki City senior care units.
Welcome to @gamtorino, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Turin Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art). With its collection of over 50,000 works including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, installations, videos, and photographs, GAM offers visitors art ranging from the 1800s to today by artists like Pellizza da Volpedo, Medardo Rosso, Marc Chagall, Andy Warhol, and many others.
Turin was the first Italian city to foster a public collection of modern art as an integral part of its Civic Museum, which opened in 1863. The collections were originally housed with the ancient art collections in a building close to the Mole Antonelliana. In 1895 they were transferred to a building near corso Siccardi (now corso Galileo Ferraris), which had been built years earlier for an art exhibition, and where there they remained until 1942.
The collections currently comprise over 50,000 works including paintings, sculptures, installations, and photographs in addition to an extensive collection of drawings and engravings and one of the most important European collections of art films and videos. Together with research and conservation, GAM aims to target as broad an audience as possible and responds to public demand for knowledge with permanent and temporary exhibitions and pays close attention to issues of accessibility and education, for children and young people of all ages and their families.
For many years, GAM Education Dept has pursued the goal of making art accessible through the Museum; regular projects are organised for the social inclusion of people with disabilities. The programme includes augmented perception activities and ranges from the use of touch tour maps, modelling workshops, guided tours with LIS (Italian sign language) interpretation, workshops with artists and special projects.
GAM’s case study aims to support the deaf community, with whom GAM has a long history of cooperation thanks to the ongoing collaboration with the Istituto dei sordi di Torino. We are targeting the deaf community with a special focus on teenagers by designing an APP to guide visitors in the museum, not only to give information on the collection, but mainly to enable deaf people and other visitors to actively participate in cultural interpretation and storytelling and connect and share their interpretations through social media functions.
The Hecht Museum is a medium sized museum located in the University of Haifa campus in Haifa, Israel. The museum displays archaeological finds from the Land of Israel and moreover presents European art from the 19th and 20th centuries. The Hecht Museum also serves as a study and research centre for students and academic staff from a variety of circles.
The Hecht Museum was inaugurated in 1984. It was the initiative of the late Dr. Reuben Hecht. From his youth, Dr. Hecht was interested in the archaeology of the Land of Israel, and for a period of sixty years he assiduously collected archaeological artifacts representing the material culture of the Land of Israel in ancient times. He took special interest in finds from the Bronze Age to the end of the Byzantine period, a time of great significance for the Jewish people. The Art Wing of the Museum was inaugurated in 1989.
The display exhibits the archaeology and history of the Land of Israel in chronological sequence, from the Chalcolithic period to the Byzantine period (ca. 4500 BCE – 600 CE). The museum is also home to the Ma’agan Michael Ship, the wreck of a fifth-century BCE merchantman. The museum art collection includes French painting of the Barbizon School, Impressionism, Post-impressionism, and the School of Paris, and Jewish art from mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century. The museum owns paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Vincent van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, Max Liebermann and many others.
The museum works with various communities, activities ranging from hosting many school tours and other workshops. The Museum also holds an annual competition in the plastic arts. The Hecht Foundation grants scholarships to winners of these competitions, and awards fellowships to M.A. and Ph.D. students. The Museum holds conferences, symposia, seminars, and lectures and publishes catalogues of its exhibitions of archaeology and art.
The Hecht case study aims to support school students from different religions and ethnic communities, in particular minority populations who visit the museum as part of school tours. Students will be asked to interpret historical narratives and express their opinions and ideas on how these apply to today’s setting. They will be encouraged to view and reflect on other students’ opinions, which might be different than their own, thus increasing their exposure to a diversity of opinions, enhancing social cohesion, and promoting the voices of minority groups.
The National Museum of Natural Sciences is one of the most important scientific research institutes in Spain in the scope of natural sciences. With over 70 researchers in areas ranging from paleobiology and geology to ecology and climate change including environmental biology and biodiversity, the Museum is one of the emblematic centres of the Spanish National Research Council.
@mncn_csic’s aim is to convey to society the knowledge generated by their researchers. MNCN’s highly qualified professionals are dedicated to the scientific collections and art exhibitions that the Museum houses, enabling explanations of scientific discoveries for the visiting public.
The National Museum of Natural Sciences is one of the oldest natural history museums in the world. It was created by King Carlos III in 1771 as the Royal Cabinet of Natural History. The Royal Museum of Natural Sciences kept this name until 1847, when it was renamed the Museum of Natural History. In 1815, regulations were drawn up for the museum and the Royal Botanical Garden, the Mineralogical Study and the Chemistry Laboratory collection were incorporated into it, as well as the Astronomical Observatory.
The National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid is currently housed in the Palace of Arts and Industry and its History collections originated in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History, established in 1771 by Carlos III. With holdings that include over 10m specimens, the Museum is recognised as one of the main resource centres for the study of Spanish and Mediterranean fauna; there is also a good representation of fauna from other biogeographical regions which was added to the collections via the scientific expeditions of 18th and 19thC Spanish naturalists. Besides these historical holdings, new material has been gathered through Museum research projects. As a result, many of these collections have become a key resource in different research areas.
MNCN works to make the museum accessible to everyone. In recent years, two projects have been developed thanks to funding from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT): Seeing with your hands, listening with your eyes, feeling with your memories, and learning without limitations. The MNCN, an accessible museum (reference FCT-17-12123) and a museum of all and for all: accessible MNCN (reference FCT-18-13218). The National Museum of Natural Sciences works to make its natural heritage accessible to all audiences, including refugees. Since 2017, we have been collaborating with the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR) through the project “Living together without borders”.
MNCN’s case study aims to support schoolteachers to explain to their students how to interpret the scientific evidence of the past and present and see how the choices we make today will live far beyond us, in deep time. Thus, discovering how human actions are driving Earth’s rapidly changing climate today much like long-ago geological events did in the past. Our aim is for the children to understand the importance of the conservation movement’s motto: “Think globally, act locally”.
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