In Istanbul is the surprising Museum of Innocence, conceived by Orhan Pamuk, with all its emotional values that far outweigh the value of the objects; in Naples, a travelling exhibition- conceived by me- known as the Museum of Madness, with its emotionally impactful styling in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore di Pietrasanta. A museum that didn’t exist previously and that moves around, that is within us, within our nature, within our moments of trial and tribulation, within our exaltations. Two unique ideas, two versions of the Mediterranean that ideally meet and mark the umpteenth parallel between Italy and Turkey, the Bosphorous and the Tyrennean Gulf, as we await the 2019 Di Meo calendar and the international party planned for Saturday 17th November at the Cirigan Palace in Istanbul.
The delicate Museum of Innocence is about balance, satisfaction, experience, abandonment, pain and joy. And of dreams. Pamuk's museum is the objectification of his book of the same title. Collecting comes from love. Not only from love and passion for things, but also the love for another being. Objects, gifts, memories. Kamal loves Fusun. He desires her but cannot have her. Therefore he collects the ojects that remind him of her. As we are also reminded in Antonio Delfini’s desperate Poems of the End of The World, moving by their innocence and obsession. Pamuk and Delfini allude to the same thing: If you haven’t loved, what objects remain to you? For Kamal the first object of his affection was the earring Fasun lost the first time they made love: “the happiest day of my life “. So to relive and commemorate that moment in his memory, Kamal accumulates object after object with a determination that seems folly to those whose souls are dead. At the end if his life Kamal asks his friend Pamuk to style a museum that collects the relics of his existence. And so Pamuk.created a museum in the building where his friend lived, a museum of his human existence. Even the Museum of Madness collects objects of alienated lives, the instruments of limitation and suffering and the works of art that represent our escape into dreams, liberation from pain, the beauty of creation. A new type of museum, a museum of life. Of lives. Of loves and human suffering. Two different museums but indicators of a changing world, of a different relationship with history that is no longer about heroes but about stories and individuals. Problematic, difficult and universal, that despite not being leaders of people but writers, are nonetheless interpreters of a collective story. We no longer need museums that try and recount the history of society, of a community, of a nation, a people, a company or a species. We have enough of them already. We all know that the the stories of single individual lives are richer, more human and more joyful than those of big communities. It is essential that museums become smaller, more personal and cheaper. Only by doing this will they be able to tell stories that are of a human dimension. The big museums want us to forget our humanity and remember the State and its masses. This is the reason so many millions of people no longer go to museums. The future of museums is in our homes”

Vittorio Sgarbi