ICOM Italia launches online literary museum tour collection

ICOM Italia has made available online a collection of literary readings and reflections exploring the relationship between museums and literature. The project, called 'I Musei raccontati' (Museums Told), was conceived during the COVID-19 lockdown by Daniele Jalla, former director of the Civic Museums of Turin and president of ICOM Italia, together with Barbara Landi, ICOM Italia's communications manager. From March 29 to June 28, 2021, weekly posts on the ICOM Italia Facebook page offered museum visits through excerpts from novels and stories, drawn from Jalla's personal collection of literary texts about museums, which he has been building for nearly thirty years. The initiative targeted ICOM members and museum professionals but also reached a wider audience via Academia.edu and LinkedIn. Jalla selected well-known authors and uniform-length passages, with many more available on topics like collecting, citing Italo Calvino, Bruce Chatwin, Susan Sontag, and Gustave Flaubert. Jalla, a historian specializing in memory studies and public history, sees literary sources as key to understanding museums' role in contemporary society. He recommends the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art near Copenhagen, Denmark, as a must-visit, suggesting reading Knud W. Jensen's 'Louisiana. Storia di un uomo e di un museo' beforehand.