Memory is Our Future. 200 Years of Museo Egizio

What Future for Museums?

The Role of Museums

by Christian Greco

Aristotle he admired at the first, and loved him, as he himself used to say, more than he did his father, for that the one had given him life, but the other had taught him a noble life.

Plutarch, Parallel Lives, “Life of Alexander”, 8.4^[1]

In describing Alexander the Great’s love of knowledge, Plutarch focuses on the relationship the Macedonian king had with his tutor, Aristotle. The words that are used are very interesting. Biological life comes to the ruler, as to us all, from our natural parents, but well-being comes from an awareness, from understanding the reality around us, from a curiosity and a love of knowledge that the philosopher was able to pass on to him. In this phrase by Plutarch, we seem to hear the echo of the ancient words of the so-called Satire of Trades, a text from Egyptian literature in which an attempt is made to highlight the role of the scribe as being the one that makes it possible to achieve the best possible life:

I would have you love writing more than your mother and have you recognize its beauty. For it is greater than any profession, there is none like it on earth … Look – prosperity is on the path of the god and abundance is written on [the scribe’s] shoulder on the day of his birth. … Thank god for your father, and for your mother, you who are placed on the path of the living.^[ii]

The concept of living well, we could say of well-being, also seems to be central in our contemporary society. We are all in a constant struggle to obtain the material means to satisfy the many needs of existence. The first needs of society are prosperity based on economic growth, scientific and technological progress, and medical discoveries. We all aspire, then, to be able to devote our time to those activities that best please us. But how do cultural heritage and museums find their place in this universal yearning for well-being? How can the material culture of the generations before us help us to lead a more aware life in the present? Heritage should not be perceived as something dead and finished but as a living element, and in this museums act as a bridge between past and future. They teach us that the presence of ancient societies in the contemporary world is indeed constituted by objects, but these are fragments of memory and bear witness to how much of those distant epochs live on in the complex stratification of customs, values and ways of behaving.

A new museum anthropology is essential to pass on to future generations the concept of not approaching the past passively but of finding ways to understand, know and value it so that it becomes an active part of the present and the future. If we succeed in establishing an awareness that without roots, without memory, the future cannot be planned, what will result is a desire to take care of this heritage of humanity and a further drive towards further study and knowledge. Museums have a long way to go to achieve this. They must look for ways to reach more diverse audiences, to broaden the level of participation, to find ways of communicating that can speak to all strata of society.^[iii] Adapting to a constantly changing society means seeking a fragile balance between innovation and conservation. In this perpetual striving, museums look to the present with the ambition of providing contemporary generations with a key to interpreting the past. Talking about the future becomes even more complex: it requires us to define what form and structure a centuries-old institution should have in the years to come and to make an interpretative effort to identify certain aspects of our contemporary living that are currently only partially perceptible.

[1] Plutarch, Parallel Lives, vol. VII, 1919.

^[ii] Satire of the Trades, https://www.scribd.com/document/189010691/Satire-of-Trades

^[iii] Trivyzadakis, in Messina et al. (eds.), Chain 2021, 2022.