Learning from a Garden. Reframing Sustainability in a Participatory Community Museum

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Pubblicato

2025-12-22

Fascicolo

Sezione

Cultural institutions facing the challenge of sustainability: from theory to practice

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13138/2039-2362/3704

Autori

  • Anna Chiara Cimoli University of Bergamo
  • Željka Miklošević University of Zagreb

Abstract

The paper reconsiders the main theoretical and methodological principles of urban heritage and museology from a post-humanist perspective, aiming to view sustainability in community- and territory-based museums from a new angle. This has been carried out through the case study of MUBIG, a territory-based community museum in a Milan suburb. The goal of the paper is to explore the possibilities of engaging with posthumanism and post-anthropocentrism and their implications for heritage management, while simultaneously adhering to the principles and critical aspects of the humanist approach to heritage. Taking a garden as a metaphor as well as concrete open-air museum room, and a “thinking-through-nature” tool, the interpretation of the data gathered through various sources for a year-long period opens up space for the unlearning, or re-learning, of the conventional postulates of museum management in a sustainable key. This process has been shaped into six “lessons” whose key concepts are organicity, relationality, coexistence, grafting, seasonality and slowness.

L'articolo affronta i fondamenti teorici e metodologici della conservazione del patrimonio urbano e della museologia da una prospettiva post-umanista, con l'obiettivo di guardare alla sostenibilità dei musei di comunità da una nuova prospettiva. Per fare ciò, si appoggia al caso di studio di MUBIG, un museo di quartiere alla periferia di Milano. L'obiettivo dell'articolo è quello di esplorare le possibilità di confrontarsi con le sfide suggerite dalla cornice teorica del post-umanesimo e del post-antropocentrismo, rispetto alle loro implicazioni per la gestione del patrimonio, senza rinunciare alla cornice critica dell'approccio umanistico. Assumendo il giardino come metafora, oltre che come sala museale en plain air e come strumento per “pensare attraverso la natura”, l'interpretazione dei dati raccolti lungo un anno genera la possibilità di un dis-apprendimento, o ri-apprendimento, dei  postulati della gestione museale in chiave di sostenibilità. Il processo viene qui tradotto in sei “lezioni”, i cui concetti chiave sono organicità, relazionalità, coesistenza, innesto, stagionalità e lentezza.

 

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Biografie autore

Anna Chiara Cimoli, University of Bergamo

PhD, Lecturer (RTT-Tenure Track Researcher), History of Contemporary Art, University of Bergamo, Faculty of Humanities, Philosophy, Communication, via Pignolo 123, 24121 Bergamo, Italy,

Željka Miklošević, University of Zagreb

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Information and Communication Sciences, 3 Ivana Lučića Street, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia

 

Come citare

Cimoli, A. C., & Miklošević, Željka. (2025). Learning from a Garden. Reframing Sustainability in a Participatory Community Museum. Il Capitale Culturale. Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage, (32), 297–326. https://doi.org/10.13138/2039-2362/3704