The new Museo del Mare e dell’Emigrazione (Museum of Sea and Emigration), is located within Naples’ port, in the spaces that were the Magazzini Generali built in the forties by the architect Marcello Canino.
The ambitious project that involves the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN – National Archaeological Museum of Naples) has been announced by the president of the Port Authority, Pietro Spirito, at the signing of an important collaboration agreement with the port of Los Angeles, in the town of San Pedro, where lives a very large community from Ischia. Indeed, some of the exhibition solutions will be modeled on those of the Los Angeles Maritime Museum. The focus of the attention will be the history of Naples born from the Greek migrations and city of migrants in the long season between the end of the 19th century and 1915 when millions of people from the south of Italy left from its port to go to the US. The core of the heritage on show will come from the findings from the ancient city port found during the excavations of Naples’s metro Art Stations, starting from the three magnificent Roman ships emerged from the subsoil almost intact. There will be many temporary exhibitions and very important contributions will come from the MANN.
Paolo Giulierini, MANN’s director, says: “We have many works related to the sea, mosaics with fishing scenes, wrecks, objects of every shape and material concerning the history of navigation, and we will be happy to make them available to this project. While, next year, we will organize an exhibition, ‘Thalassa’, to remember that the sea must be considered a bridge between peoples and not, as happens in our times, a place of conflict.”
Ilona Catani Scarlett