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