Museo e territorio, tra materialità e immaterialità The Museum and the enviroment, between material and immaterial

The new evolutionary processes have led to an increasing openness towards the territory. The Museum, which was previously an “impenetrable casket”, guardian of the precious goods contained in it, has become more permeable and open: this is demonstrated by the changes, which are noticeable in how the museum is set up and in the functions it performs. Among those functions, beside the ones of guarding and handing down, producing culture and knowledge and developing processes and synergies, of which the museum is the “incubator”, are becoming more and more important. Despite the link between museum and territory has already been invoked by Quatremère de Quincy, in recent times, the widespread awareness of the potentialities connected to a greater link between museum and territory, has established itself. This connection is, indeed, able to encourage a greater comprehension and appreciation of the contents of the one and of the values of the other. An additional field of connection between the museum and the territory is made clear by the progressive inclusion, in the contents of the first one, of documents and evidences of the culture and of the historical, social and economic events, which have defined and characterized the second one, according to the idea of understanding the landscape as a whole, in continuous transformation, of nature and culture. New typologies of museum connected to activities, such as the company museums and the ones linked to places of education such as schools and universities, are spreading. The museum opens itself to the territory, also physically, pollinating it: the model of widespread museums extends itself in order to include places and productive activities, building a synergic network with the traditional museums. Through studies of existing of possible museums located in the area of the Surrentine Peninsula and Capri Island, testimonies of the artistic, natural, productive and social history, I have investigated the link between museum and territory, seen as cultural landscape. This perspective, using the architectural and museological design as a starting point for an ideal connection between the tangibility of buildings, places and documents, and the intangibility of knowledge and values connected to them, explores the potential in considering museums as active participants in protection and enhancement of cultural landscapes within which they live and from which they are generated.