Multimedia exhibitions: between spectacle and kitsch

Lorenzo Taiuti reflects on the history and challenges of multimedia exhibitions in Italy. Museums long resisted digital languages due to fears of kitsch and loss of the medium's specificity. A decade ago, Taiuti organized an interactive intervention at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (GNAM) in Rome, using a directional glove and eye-tracker to allow disabled visitors to manipulate audiovisual content, based on Klimt's "Le tre età." The project, a collaboration between Architecture and GNAM for disability days, succeeded in engaging the public. However, Taiuti notes that in Italy, television—especially Piero Angela's intervention on the Fori Imperiali—paved the way for museums to adopt video and digital strategies. Subsequent exhibitions like Klimt at Santo Stefano al Ponte in Florence, Caravaggio at Palazzo Esposizioni, and van Gogh at Palazzo degli Esami in Rome achieved surprising success but operated as autonomous spectacles rather than integrated didactic tools. These installations emphasize high-definition enlargements and large projections, with cinematic narration, moving camera effects, soundtracks, and digital animations. Taiuti warns of the proximity to advertising language and the risk of kitsch, as kinetic imagery has become more familiar than static through television, computers, tablets, and smartphones.