The Museum of the Present opens in Palermo, dedicated to Falcone and Borsellino

It is a step-by-step path that distinguishes the opening of the Museum of the Present – ​​Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in Palermo: a work of redevelopment of an architectural asset and a green area, a project that will see the birth of a new physical, but also social space. A place of culture and culture of legality, a combination that has always distinguished the vision and mission of Falcone Foundation (active since 1992 and committed to spreading the memory and culture of legality through initiatives that often see contemporary art as protagonists, with interventions of street art, sculpture, installations and performances that over the years have involved Italian and international artists, such as those organized in 2022 on the occasion of the commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the Capaci and Via D’Amelio massacres), and which today finds the light in Jung Palacean eighteenth-century building (owned by the Metropolitan City of Palermo, which entrusted it to the Falcone Foundation) located in Via Lincoln, a few steps from Kalsa and Piazza Magione, places where the two were born and spent their childhood judges killed by the mafia in 1992. After the presentation last year of the Jung Park – the garden of the building is currently undergoing a recovery project so that it can soon become a space open to all Palermitans – it is now the time of a new important piece that will make up the mosaic of the Museum of the Present: the Blue Library.

The Blue Library of the Museum of the Present – ​​Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in Palermo

Blue is the leitmotif that guides the large room used as a library, with walls and floors entirely in this colour. When the Museum opens, the Library will become a place of consultation, enjoyment and study, with volumes coming from Giovanni Falcone’s library (and until now kept in the headquarters of the Falcone Foundation): these are mainly legal texts, many of them valuable, and fiction books and novels, including thrillers and titles by Georges Simenon and Gabriel García Márquez, authors much loved by the judge. The furnishings of the Library, and also of other areas of the Museum, are designed by leading Italian design companies, with the aim of making the new center a welcoming place, open to children and adults and with cultural activities that will also involve the Jung Park: the green area will be equipped with a cafeteria, as well as being characterized by the presence of design objects such as five lamps in the shape of red poppies, in memory of the victims of the Capaci massacre. The former park keeper’s house will be transformed into the Children Housewhich will welcome the little ones with fun activities and educational workshops curated in collaboration with Italian and European museums.

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The Museum of the Present – ​​Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in Palermo. Vision and mission

“The idea of ​​the Museum of the Present was born from a question: how to transform the memory of historical facts into energy and design? How to move from testimony to collective memory, which as such is a revolutionary act because it has to do with the present?”explains exclusively to Artribune Alessandro De Lisi, general curator for cultural activities of the Falcone Foundation and curator of the Museum of the Present. A project that sees the participation and collaboration of numerous municipalities and institutions: “we understood that art, architecture, design, photography can constitute the great machine that brings together all those who want to design through the contemporary to change the rules. This is a game-changing project.”underlines De Lisi. “This Museum is not a place of relics, but a place of the present and as such it changes. For the next three years we will have a program entirely dedicated to light, with contemporary works that will invade Jung Park and the Gallery of the Present”.

The Gallery of the Present of the Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino Museum in Palermo

The new Museum will also consist of an exhibition area, the Gallery of the Present, in which the story of the fight against the mafia will be told: the investigations of the anti-mafia pool, the massacres, the Maxi Trial. Events from the past that are updated through the works of painting, sculpture, design and photography that will distinguish the Museum’s exhibition programme, with exhibitions that will bring contemporary and past authors into dialogue: “we must offer opportunities for confusion, no contemporary operation is orderly, different dimensions coexist within us: for this reason art, design, theater and photography are the most suitable languages ​​to give voice to this great confusion that is the present, and also to take a stand and say ‘here the mafias lose and we win'”continues De Lisi. The opening of the Museum of the Present – ​​Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino is scheduled for June 21st, the day of the summer solstice, returning to the metaphor and theme of light that will guide the vision of the Museum. However, its presentation will take place on May 23, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Capaci massacre; it will therefore close for about a month to complete the construction work.

The cultural commitment of the Falcone Foundation

“Over the last thirty years, the Falcone Foundation has worked on the permanent construction of an anti-mafia social pull, bringing together territories, institutions, young people, students, schools, businesses, the world of culture”, explains De Lisi, retracing the activities of the Falcone Foundation. “This anti-mafia social pull has symbols, and our symbol is contemporary art. We started three years ago in Palermo, having two large murals created Andrea Buglisi And Igor Scalisi Palminteri: the first is the author of the ‘Gate of the Giants’, i.e. the portraits of Falcone and Borsellino which are located a few meters from the bunker room; the second of ‘Roveto Ardente’, a portrait of Don Pino Puglisi in the neighborhood where his father was murdered”. And then the installations, like the Tree of All Of Gregor Prugger placed inside the Spasimo “representing the multitude of murdered women, children and men and forgotten stories”and Elisa, “Arcangelo Sassolino’s ‘cement-eating’ bulldozer located in the Quattro Canti”.

The Falcone Foundation

“Since immediately after the 1992 massacres and for over thirty years the Falcone Foundation has been engaged in constant activity with schools, institutions, businesses and the world of culture to unite the country to protect the hereditary and fundamental values ​​left from the sacrifice of my brother and from Paolo Borsellino”points out Maria FalconePresident of the Falcone Foundation. “The opening of a new and modern space is a further opportunity to underline that these more than concrete values ​​of culture and dialogue must be at the center of a civil community free from mafia blackmail. The Museum of the Present dedicated to Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, ideally to all the victims of the mafia, will therefore be centered on the most important historical truth: we have never stopped saying no to criminal blackmail and doing everything we can to ensure that in the future the new generations are protagonists of an even stronger and unstoppable rebirth without the mafias anymore”.

Desiree Maida

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