Memory and Territory
Siculiana’s #MeTe
museum
turns ten years old
A year of initiatives
It starts on Saturday
with a conference
Already in the name, which lends itself to different interpretations, there is the commitment of an entire community that from the beginning has supported the dream of its realization, actively participating in the recovery of small great treasures, now common heritage and memory of the area.
It blows out its first ten candles, the #MeTe Museum in Siculiana, and on Saturday, April 27, at 6 p.m. with a celebratory conference that will retrace its milestones, theALT Leisure and Tourisme Association, which conceived and created it, kicks off the year of initiatives specially designed for the tenth anniversary; the appointment is at the museum’s premises on Via Picarella, in the heart of the Casale district, the oldest in the Agrigento village.
“The idea of the museum,” says anthropologist Stefano Siracusa, curator of #MeTe and president of ALT, “was born in 2009, in conjunction with the establishment of the association. We were a group of guys at the bar, and as we sat at the table, we were trying to find ways to tell about our territory. Thus began, almost door-to-door, a collection of vintage photos. The whole village participated, pulling old family snapshots out of their drawers, which resulted in the first exhibition organized by ALT. From there, also exploiting the potential of social media, our completely self-managed adventure began. Ours, in fact, is a bottom-up project that was made possible thanks to donations and the work of many volunteers. “
Volunteers who were recruited around Italy, and who participated in the summer camps organized by the Leisure and Tourisme Association, in the village with one of the most beautiful coastlines in Sicily. Summer camps and workshops played on the combination of tourism-museum activities, which were attended by people of all ages, from 18-year-olds to 50-year-olds, united by their interest in the territory and urban regeneration.
“Our figure,” says Syracuse, “is that of storytelling. #MeTe does not want to be just an exhibition space of artifacts, but wants to actually tell the history of the territory; a narrative also made possible by the many donations from the many emigrants abroad. In the museum, then, there are not only objects of ethno-anthropological interest, but also a glimpse of the Risorgimento is possible , thanks to the donation of the Basile family, particularly Giuseppe Basile, the main supporter of the museum, great-grandson and namesake of the doctor who treated the wound of another Giuseppe, the Hero of the Two Worlds.” And from story to story, from Garibaldi’s doctor to the birth of the “pizzo,” the petty extortion practice recounted by #MeTe with the tummino that was used to measure the volume of grain; and with which, the bully on duty, stole from both the master and those who broke their backs in the fields.
“We take great care,” Siracusa says, “of theeducational approach: the objects on display are not equipped with simple captions, but with exhaustive descriptive panels and multimedia content that, for ten years already, can be accessed by taking advantage of the QR code. In addition, one of the three floors of the museum is set aside for temporary exhibitions in which we give space to contemporary art, for a dialogue between past and present, which gives us the opportunity to talk about today and stay connected with our time.”
Text by Angela Mannino
