Abstract
This paper reconstructs a genealogy of access in Italian art and museology from the 1920s to the 1970s, arguing that the idea of creative access—understood as both an aesthetic and social practice—originated within the Italian avant-garde. It asks how early twentieth-century experiments in tactility and multisensory perception informed later models of inclusive design and museum education. The study begins with Carlo Carrà’s La pittura dei suoni, rumori e odori (1913) and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Manifesto del Tattilismo (1921), which reimagined art as a multisensory field that challenges the dominance of vision and anticipates later discourses on embodied perception. Marinetti’s proposal for an “educazione al tatto,” developed amid the sensory deprivation of the First World War trenches, framed touch as both an epistemological method and a political act—an art form accessible to all bodies and senses. Half a century later, Bruno Munari reinterpreted these Futurist principles within postwar contexts of pedagogy and design. His projects Le mani guardano (Palazzo Reale, 1979) and Messaggio tattile per una bambina non vedente (1976) transformed the museum into an experimental and participatory environment for sensory learning, bridging avant-garde experimentation with inclusive educational practice. The paper concludes with the founding of the Museo Tattile Statale Omero (Ancona, 1993), the world’s first public tactile museum, which institutionalized this century-long dialogue between art, touch, and design. By tracing this trajectory, it situates Italy’s multisensory avant-garde within broader global histories of disability, art, and access.
Presenters
Virginia MaranoAssociate Scholar, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, Firenze, Italy
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
ACCESSIBLE MUSEUMS, MULTISENSORY MUSEOLOGY, TACTILE AESTHETICS, HISTORIES OF ACCESS
