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Conservation, restoration, museography: a complex search for balance
The course will begin by analyzing the historical and theoretical evolution of two concepts long considered "antithetical, opposed, irreconcilable" (Paolo Torsello): restoration and conservation. Beginning with a brief overview of the interventions undertaken in the centuries preceding the mid-eighteenth century, the course will analyze the key milestones and key figures (Eugéne Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, John Ruskin, William Morris, Alois Riegl, Camillo Boito, Luca Beltrami, Gustavo Giovannoni, Cesare Brandi) of a complex journey that led to the establishment of architectural restoration—in its various formulations: archaeological, stylistic, philological, scientific, and critical—as an autonomous discipline and the consequent attenuation of the conflict between restoration and conservation that emerged during the nineteenth century.
At the same time, the analysis will focus on a key juncture: the encounter between old and new, tradition and contemporaneity, a true ideological battleground between opposing positions. From these essential premises, the investigation of the "museo interno" (Vittorio Gregotti 1990) will begin, a widespread practice in Italy from the 1950s onward. The adaptation of historic spaces to museological innovations condenses salient aspects of the architectural debate, between "conservationist" theses and the demands of contemporary architecture. Emblematic cases of the reconversion of a historic space into a museum space will be analyzed, starting with the lessons of the great masters of postwar Italian museography, who, by comparing the conservative discipline of restoration with the culture and practice of architectural design, highlight the possibilities of modern language. The analysis will be extended to other case studies, selected from among the many possible examples of significant architectural interventions in historic and monumental buildings, aimed at restoring their functionality and image using contemporary means and languages.
