TRIBUTE TO KOUNELLIS

The exhibit design for the Museo Archeologico Oliveriano in Pesaro is a tribute to the sensitivity of the artists, in particular to the work of Jannis Kounellis. The artistic approach to the fragment becomes the basis for the museum design.

 The project for the Archaeological Museum of Pesaro, part of Olivieri Institution, consists of all the interventions to display the permanent collection and of the renovation of the spaces dedicated to the Museum itself.
The measures taken to strengthen the building and the weaknesses of the former exhibit solution, unable to respond to the latest studies on the collection, compromised the scientific quality of the museum making the visit difficult.

TRIBUTE TO KOUNELLIS is inspired by the use of the fragment in the work of the artist Jannis Kounellis. In his project Translating China, a long series of ceramic fragments are placed on raw steel plates to build a figure-ground relationship between the materiality of the ceramics and that of the metal plate. The museum project converts the artistic approach of arte povera into an exhibition project, gathering the archaeological fragments into larger geometric figures where each figure corresponds to a didactic unit of the scientific project.
In this way the exhibition units from the prehistoric necropolis, of the Roman city of Pesaro and of the early Christian funerary rites, are recognisable by geometry, in a sequence of wall and free-standing figures. Finally, the raw steel panels constitute the technical covering of a double wall, concealing all the systems for light, heating and cooling.
This continuous perimeter tape, dotted with finds from the various eras, symbolises the time of the History, articulates the presentation of the scientific project of the exhibit design and recalls the layer of earth that guarded the finds until their discovery.