edited by Andrea Zanella
This volume was created in response to an unrealisable proposal, and the unexpected direction such an impossibility opened up. It began with the PNRR-funded JERUS-IT-ARTS project, which investigates artistic networks between Italy and Jerusalem. Logistical issues prevented us from delving further into our initial idea, but our thinking shifted in a direction that, over time, revealed itself the stronger one.
How can a musical instrument be musealised? The question seems simple, but raises issues that traditional museology has not yet fully resolved. An instrument carries a function, a voice, a history of use. Restoring objects, selecting cases, designing sound experiences: all of these situations become knots to unravel one by one.
This volume tackles such nodes in the form of a science-based and use-oriented collective manual. We move from the histories of collections to contemporary museology and restoration, with thirty-five entries on museums around the world. Our book is aimed at students of musicology, museology, and cultural heritage, but also at curators, restorers, and designers. A very real lacuna is filled by this updated Italian-language manual for a discipline that is still in formation.
Andrea Zanella is Full Professor of the History of Modern Art and Museology at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where he is also PNRR Manager. A scholar of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Italian and French painting, he has collaborated with museums and institutions in Italy and France and is the author of several essays and international catalogues on collectors, museum heritage, and modern art.
