Ten women leaders bring innovation to Calabrian museums

Architects, archaeologists, art historians, in the same vein as Palma Bucarelli, originally from Locri, director of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome for more than 30 years, and in that of Emilia Zinzi, who was the Superintendent of Catanzaro at the end of the 1950s, make a fundamental contribution to the protection and enhancement of Calabria's cultural heritage. Of the 15 museums that are part of the region's museum system, at least 10 are directed by women, united by the same vision: to make them a living space, of innovation, of sociality, at the service of the territory before that of the regulars of cultural consumption. A vision that updates languages and helps the narration of art, with more women also on the staff and among the curators.

In Cosenza, Rossana Baccari heads the city's National Gallery, which exhibits works by Calabrian and Neapolitan painters between the 16th and 19th centuries. Camilla Brivio directs the Cattolica of Silo, emblem of Byzantine Calabria, and the church of San Francesco in Gerace, among the oldest testimonies of Calabrian monastic history. Simona Bruni is the director of the Metauros archaeological museum in Gioia Tauro and that of Lametino. Elisa Nisticò divides her time between Ancient Kaulon, a rich polis of Magna Graecia, and the millenary area of Scolacium, in the Gulf of Squillace. The underwater archaeology of ancient Kroton, Riace and Porticello, Villa San Giovanni and Cannitello is entrusted to the head of the Superintendency's sector Alessandra Ghelli, while Maria Mallemace heads the Superintendency of the metropolitan city of Reggio Calabria and the province of Vibo Valentia.

They are all custodians of an ancient history that renews itself within dynamic and plural spaces. And in some cases, when they interpret the contemporary, they break the mould. Like Elisa Longo, the young director of Mabos, Museo d'arte del Bosco della Sila, in Sorgo San Basile, Catanzaro province: a private space that articulates itself in a complex creative ecosystem - contemporary art, nature, photography, poetry and various sounds - that has recently entered the national museum system for the quality of the standards achieved. "Being contemporary today, in places of culture as in art, no longer requires models. If anything, it places us outside limits and canonical logics to become hybrid creatures capable of working in any context," explains the director. "Visiting the Mabos means undertaking a journey among 35 site-specific works installed in the woods, walking following the rhythm of a sound poem in an area dedicated to Gioacchino da Fiore, or the thread, in black and white, of Mario Giacomelli's photographs inspired by the verses of Franco Cosabile. An innovative museum idea, conceived by entrepreneur Mario Talarico and perfected by Elisa Longo, with the support of the Region and the Mic for about 165,000 euro.

The obsession of Marilena Cerzoso, director of the Museo dei Brettii e degli Enotri, on the other hand, is the sharing of knowledge and skills with young people: 'Certainly the main feature of my direction of the civic museum of Cosenza is the involvement of the community. I see no other possible way of developing the territory,' she says, 'than to express the museum's educational function with schools and families. Above all, Marilena Cerzoso is recovering the artefacts relating to the city's earliest history, which are kept in the museum in Sibari and are being studied for new cataloguing. An operation that in total, including some work on the structure, amounts to over 400 thousand ero (funds from the Ministry of Cutura).

Elena Trunfio is face to face with Demeter, Persephone and Aphrodite on a daily basis: the temples and sacred areas dedicated to the female divinities in the city of Locri Epizephyrii oblige her "to come to terms with the genius loci in total connection with Mother Earth", the director of the National Archaeological Park of Locri, which also boasts a valuable exhibition area, admits with a smile. An architect lent to ancient Greece, Trunfio is making a revolution: new paths, new spaces for shows and other places to stop as suggested to her by visitors and associations in the area, involved in many cultural initiatives. 3.5 million of ministerial funds are available. With the same care Elena Trunfio directs the small museum and archaeological park in Bova Marina, containing the remains of a synagogue. "The most important intervention? Bringing it out of anonymity'.