TAM TAM: Diffuse Museum of Communication opens with a work by Nespolo

The first installation-which was unveiled in the presence of the Rector, Prof. Gianni Canova, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Prof. Giovanni Puglisi, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Tourism, Prof. Vincenzo Trione, and the Councillors for Culture of the Lombardy Region and the City of Milan, Francesca Caruso and Tommaso Sacchi, respectively-is the Theater of Media Arts, a work created by Biella-based sculptor Ugo Nespolo. On the occasion, the artist was awarded an honorary Master's Degree in Management of Art and Cultural Resources.

Opening the ceremony, Prof. Giovanni Puglisi-also the Master's scientific director-told how the meeting with Nespolo was "a consecration of the Master's project in Management of Artistic and Cultural Resources: to educate to beauty, which is declined through the multiplicities of all artistic languages. The authorial humility allowed Nespolo to construct a message from the decomposition of an artistic existing, skillfully metabolized. Our students will know how to draw from the vitality of this artist stimulus and courage to give their future profession content and depth."

The ceremony continued with the laudation of Prof. Vincenzo Trione, who, motivating the Master's Degree honoris causa to the artist, said, "Among the heretical animators of Arte Povera, among the most original protagonists of Italian Pop Art, but also a filmmaker and theorist, Ugo Nespolo is among the last heirs of what has been called 'mass avant-garde.' A conscious heir of futurism, capable of moving across non-contiguous registers, media and territories (painting, sculpture, graphics, design, cinema, television), committed to interweaving, in the footsteps of a noble twentieth-century tradition, the experience of making with the practice of critical writing, Nespolo has made continuous raids between practices and languages, without ever betraying his unmistakable style, founded on bright and garish colors, on respect for recognizability, on the desire to resolve every figure in a popular and childlike key. But, above all, on the wisdom of constructing amusing visual narratives."

"I am thrilled to be here, in what I consider to be one of the most beautiful campuses I have ever visited," Maestro Ugo Nespolo said instead, in his lectio magistralis. It is a truly extraordinary place, not only for its structure but also for the programs it presents. For this I consider myself most honored. Regarding the work created for the University lobby, you may wonder: why work with a theater? Why use moving objects? Because the idea really comes from portable literature: this little theater is an extension of a puppet theater that I used to do as a child. It's kind of the same concept: a little theater, but touching on the arts that have to do with you, with the university. The message I want to send is not to get caught up in the cliché, in what should be done. It is much more important to be critical and take the wrong way, the wrong path. Don't think that to make the market happy you have to repeat what has already worked, because it is not true that what costs money is worth it: what costs money, costs money. So never be afraid to be daring, to go inside the disciplines: for example, I have worked a lot with film, but also with television. The artist must be truly free."

TAM TAM is the rhythmic repetition, like the sound of a drum - among the earliest ways of communicating at a distance - of the initials of Maestro Nespolo's work, Theater of Medial Arts, which represents 14 icons of communication: from the typewriter, to the snail mail, from newspaper headlines to television and radio and the movie camera, and also a revisitation of Rodin's The Thinker .

"The Theater of Media Arts," said Rector Canova at the inauguration, "is only the first stage of a larger Diffuse Museum of Communication that will gradually occupy the interior and exterior spaces of the Athenaeum. This wants to be a museum open not only to the IULM community but also to the city, and it wants to narrate the disciplines we teach at this University, namely communication in all its nuances. We asked ourselves: how is it possible that in our country there is no museum dedicated to communication? So, let's start doing it starting from here."
"IULM University has already housed for years," the Rector added, "several works of art, from Pomodoro to Isgrò, from Moncada to Rotelli. A neighborhood can also be regenerated starting from the works of art it hosts. And the idea is to make the IULM Campus a territory of widespread beauty and an expanded museum of communication."

• La residenza di Poseidone era un gran bel palazzo in fondo al mare
  Ignazio Moncada, 2002
• Sulle finzioni: “Bilancia giorni”
  Giò Pomodoro, 1983
• Monumento all’Inferno
  Emilio Isgrò, 2018
• Porta d’oro
  Marco Nereo Rotelli, 2009
• Time Without End
  Masbedo, 2021
• Albero Segreto
  Eliazar Hernández Arias e Nidia del Carmen de la Cruz, 2021
• Contatti Tenaglia
  Giò Pomodoro, 1970
• Teatro delle Arti Mediali
  Ugo Nespolo, 2023