Historical Displays of Italian Museums: a Pilot Project for a Digital Atlas

The paper outlines the aims of the national research project The Forms of the Museum: Pilot Project for a Digital Atlas of Italian Museums, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research. It focuses on one of the project’s main outcomes: the database entitled Digital Atlas of Italian Museums (DAIM), a repository of images – paintings, drawings, engravings, photographs and audiovisual materials – depicting the displays of Italian museums, collected and cataloged during the research project. DAIM has been structured and implemented within the e-Dvara platform, developed by the L.I.D.A. (ICT Laboratory for the Art Historical Documentation) of the Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage of the University of Udine in collaboration with infoFactory. The paper illustrates the features and potential of the e-Dvara platform, highlighting in particular its ease of use in modelling data-archiving structures without requiring advanced technical or IT expertise. Open to further implementation, DAIM is conceived as a tool for museums of all types, enabling the collection and filing of visual materials that allow for the reconstruction of the history of their own displays. DAIM is complemented by an additional tool, developed by the Fondazione Memofonte of Florence, which makes it possible to easily create and develop virtual exhibitions focused on specific materials or topics (such as showcases, audiences, etc.). By integrating research and dissemination, the project “The Forms of the Museum” promotes sustainable, flexible digital tools that foster critical awareness of the museums’ complex history and layered meanings, and that reveal to a broader audience their role as dynamic agents in the production, mediation, and transformation of cultural knowledge.