The Regional Museum of Psychiatry was established in Milan in 1993, thanks to the vision of Teresa Melorio and Enza Baccei, to embark on a fascinating project: rediscovering the human value of those affected by even very severe mental disorders, integrating them into social and cultural life, overcoming the barriers that still segregate them in a separate world, completely disconnected from a society too busy maintaining the narrow standards of rationality and “norm”.
The MAPP is a contemporary art museum located in the former Paolo Pini Psychiatric Hospital in Milan, conceived in 1993 by Teresa Melorio and Enza Baccei and realized with the collaboration of the Mental Health Department of Niguarda Ca’ Granda Hospital, the artistic direction of Marco Meneguzzo, and the involvement of some well-known Milanese art galleries.
The project’s goal was to transform the psychiatric hospital into a meeting place where “making art” would be an opportunity to exchange ideas and languages between professional artists and people affected by mental distress, and where sharing cultural and artistic experiences between the so-called “healthy” and “ill” would concretely contribute to the care and transformation of a place that had, for years, symbolized incommunicability.
The works created directly on the walls of the former asylum express the intrinsic value contained in every person even when severely ill in body or mind; the MAPP testifies that a true transformation in the way of caring is also realized through a specific aesthetic quality of the space that expresses the richness of symbolic values of the human being in all its depth. Via Ippocrate, 45 20161 Milan.
