Archivi Digitali del Contemporaneo

The Campania Felix region is a producer of art and art history, both recent and more distant, as outlined in the research and digitization project “MADREscenza 2020 - Fondazione Donnaregina per gli Archivi del Contemporaneo in Regione Campania” (Thematic Context 1 - Contemporary Art). “ History is the archive, the blueprint of what we are and cease to be, while the present is the sketch of what we are becoming," wrote philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and it is from this idea of history that we started, identifying seven important art archives in Campania that encapsulate a history, or rather a collection of histories, to be told thanks to the great variety of documents preserved there. These archives are also an important source for the philological reconstruction and public sharing of the most important contemporary artistic experiments that have taken place in Campania since 1960. Some of the cornerstones of this centrality of contemporary art in Naples and Campania can be traced back to specific episodes—exhibitions, events, productions of works - and protagonists - artists, critics, curators, gallery owners, collectors - which are at the same time already art history and potential indicators of responsible cultural activity, of growth that finds in contemporary culture a factor of social cohesion, economic development, and territorial identity. The heritage of and in the contemporary for Naples and Campania can be considered a true cultural brand that the territory can express: that is, a widespread heritage, whose management, shared with the legitimate owners, triggers a productive partnership between the public and private sectors.

The MADREscenza 2020 project, which brings together research and innovation activities on the dematerialization of works, documents, and exhibition spaces belonging to the public and private cultural heritage of the 20th century and the new millennium in Campania, has identified the following archives as the main protagonists of this rich productive season, also due to the great variety of documents and testimonies they preserve: The Marcello Rumma Fund of the Lia Incutti Rumma Archive (Naples), the Amelio-Santamaria Archive (Naples), the Marina Vergiani Archive (Naples), the Filiberto and Bianca Menna Foundation Archive (Salerno), The Living Theatre Fund of the Morra Foundation (Naples), the contemporary art funds of Castel Sant'Elmo of the Campania Regional Museums Directorate, and the archive of the Madre - Donnaregina Museum of Contemporary Art (Naples). Thus, these art archives, owned by foundations, museums, galleries, and private individuals, tell their stories through description and narration. Archives are to be understood as places of ‘physical’ conservation, which become ‘digital’, and in which the various collections made available on the web for free use show clear characteristics of completeness and uniqueness, given the structure, variety, and relevance of the many materials preserved.  It has also been necessary to define shared working protocols and provide clear operational guidelines for the correct scientific management of documentary heritage that is so complex in terms of its constitution, formation, and future transmission.
 
After extensive research, cataloguing, and digitization, works of art, documents, printed materials, and exhibition spaces are now networked, sharing knowledge and insights from the recent past. The portal offers an overview of the historical and cultural memory of art in Campania. A galaxy of relationships intertwines and connects the infinite variety of this contemporary cultural heritage, which expands in space and time, right up to the most pressing current events. A wealth of documentation and memory, combining and integrating past and present, thus finds a “home” in an “Archive of Archives,” a single platform accessible to everyone: scholars and professionals, businesses and research institutions, but also open to a wide and varied audience of users. The decision to draw up an initial map of contemporary archives, which are particularly at risk of dispersion, was dictated by the desire for a regional cultural policy focused on the protection, conservation, and enhancement of these particular cultural assets, custodians of the material and immaterial riches that characterize them. The mapping represents the first step in a fact-finding survey in a largely unexplored field, that of public and private contemporary art archives (from the 1900s to the present day). Ultimately, as French museologist Hugues de Varine wrote, it is a matter of sharing the awareness that each of us possesses a small but fundamental piece of cultural memory: ‘the heritage of the community is global and also includes the private heritage of the members of the community themselves’.