Museum of the Image will be born in Naples: photography, film, painting and sculpture in dialogue with new media

In March the PAN | Palace of the Arts Naples will close to begin a renovation plan that includes multiple interventions, financed with PNRR, POC Metro and POC Regione Campania funds and with resources from the Naples Metropolitan City. Work is scheduled to be completed by 2025. Upon reopening, the spaces of the municipal museum will be allocated to the Museum of the Image. Photography, cinema, digital art, as well as painting and sculpture in dialogue with new media. A place to discover how images today are transformed, contaminated and hybridized.

The new Museum of the Image, designed by architect Giovanni Francesco Frascino, aims to rethink the PAN’s current configuration, strongly reaffirming the original urban vocation of the 18th-century building. Among the themes addressed by PAN are the relationship with the city, the public dimension, and the visual experience; the intent is to offer an immersive place, with a dedicated lighting system and a degree of security appropriate to today’s museum standards. It will also host anthological exhibitions and original site-specific installations produced in partnership with Italian and foreign institutions. In addition to rooms dedicated to museum artworks, the museum will dedicate a room to digital art works. PAN - Museo dell’Immagine then intends to offer itself as a research center, in which to investigate the new frontiers of the visual landscape, host artistic projects aimed at exploring the status of images, seminars, and debates.

PAN’s programming will be joined by that of the Casina Pompeiana, which aims to be the new home of contemporary performativity. Resuming the experimental attitude of the 1990s, it is intended to transform the Casina into a place where one can confront, including through workshop modalities and collective practices, the latest trends in contemporary art.

The break from the Palace’s activities has made possible the birth of MetaPan, a digital project funded by the Metropolitan City of Naples and promoted by the City of Naples in partnership with MEET Digital Culture Center, the International Center for Digital Art and Culture in Milan, curated by Maria Grazia Mattei, Founder and President of MEET and Valentino Catricalà, curator of contemporary art, with the technical supervision of architect Giuliano Bora, who has created the space within a three-dimensional immersive platform. An initiative that will allow the Museum to remain “open” and active, but in the metaverse. A place destined to permanently enrich the exhibition offerings through digital art exhibitions and virtual areas where to continue to enjoy the city’s museum offerings through a gaze linked to hyper-contemporaneity. The public, through a digital platform, will be able to immerse themselves in the universe of images through the use of an avatar. In the first phase of the opening of the virtual space, the cultural offerings focus on digital art, with a selection of specific works created by four nationally and internationally renowned artists - Chiara Passa, Davide Quayola, Auriea Harvey and Bianco-Valente - who have taken the opportunity to create and display their works in an unprecedented environment.

The development of MetaPan as an international communication space will also be an opportunity for collaboration with academies and universities to devise strategies to promote the physical museum through virtual spaces. In addition to the exhibition rooms, in fact, the space will also host a conference room that will host, between February and March 2024, a cycle of master classes on issues related to digital art, held by some of the most important professors and experts in art and new media, such as Derrick de Kerckhove, Ruggero Eugeni, Elisabetta Modena, Andrea Pinotti, and Francesco Spampinato. Introduced by Vincenzo Trione, the appointments will be partly open to the public and partly reserved for accredited students who can receive a certificate of participation in the initiative at the end of the cycle.

The full schedule of events and how to register will be available on the City of Naples website.

Museum of the Image will be born in Naples: photography, film, painting and sculpture in dialogue with new media

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