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Summary

"GENOVA “TUTTO MONDO”: Spaces, Actions, and Intercultural Reflections in the City"

The City of Genoa - Directorate of Museums - Educational Services - Civic Museums, in collaboration with Defence for Children International Italy, is launching a series of artistic and cultural regeneration activities at the Civic Museums, focused on cultural integration, dialogue, and exchange, involving foreign communities present in the city. The activities will be tailored according to the collections, the museum’s mission, and the cultural needs of the specific neighborhoods involved.

“Tutto Mondo” (All World) is a phrase coined by Edouard Glissant (1928-2011), French writer, poet, and essayist, which encapsulates a vision that sees human, artistic, and cultural expression as a dimension that is always connected to the rest of the world, even when produced locally. Glissant, who was a frequent visitor to Genoa and deeply in love with the city, believed that its geography—between the mountains and the sea—could serve as a metaphor for the meeting of diverse elements. Such an encounter, he argued, could lead to the creation of something that had never been said, seen, or thought before. Glissant also perceived Genoa as a place of endless departures and passages, a dreamlike space marked by the many, complex, and mysterious relationships between the Mediterranean and the Ocean.

These evocative reflections inspire the desire to rediscover Genoa’s cultural heritage by linking it with the various stimuli, signs, and presences that have arrived from around the world and are now embedded in the city. The project aims to make the Civic Museums more accessible to parts of the community—foreigners, migrants, refugees—that do not feel they belong to them, either due to cultural distance or challenges in social, economic, and cultural integration. In this context, the museum network provides both ideal and concrete spaces, actions, and pathways that foster encounters between different artistic, social, and cultural perspectives brought by the foreign individuals involved. This is a form of hospitality, aimed not only at listening to voices that often go unheard, but also at gaining different perspectives that can help regenerate the cultural heritage of the past, while projecting it into the future. The idea aligns closely with the theme of the 2024 Venice Biennale titled "Stranieri Ovunque" ("Foreigners Everywhere"), from which useful operational guidance can be drawn.