Il Museo Laboratorio della Mente di Roma, inaugurated in 2000, traces the history of the Santa Maria della Pietà Hospital, from its foundation as “Hospitale de’poveri forestieri et pazzi dell’Alma Città di Roma” to its definitive closure in 1999, five centuries later, as a psychiatric hospital.
An immersive narrative itinerary through the memories of the asylum, for a reading of otherness, its forms and languages, to combat stigma and promote mental health.?
The original visit path (supported by the Santa Maria della Pietà Historical-Audiovisual Archive and the Cencelli Library) is structured as a historical cartography of institutional practices and anti-institutional practices, as a double and continuous dialectical process of deconstructing the geography of spatial, physical, psychological, social constraints and reconstructing subjectivity: a subjective experience generated in the crossing of asylum spaces and in the unexpected appearance of recalled stories.
The prominence assumed by the Museo Laboratorio della Mente in the Lazio Region Museum Organization, the ICOM Italy Award received in 2010 as “Museum of the Year for innovation and attractiveness in relationships with the public,” the constant flow of visitors, the collaboration with schools, universities and research institutes, health services, socio-cultural associations, national and international museums, the positive results of initiatives characterizing the first ten years of its activities, the institutional dimension of “care” are the founding reasons to continue, in permanent dialogue with the community and territory, the work of enhancing its artistic-documentary heritage, welcoming, research, training activities and the completion of the exhibition project undertaken in 2008 with Studio Azzurro.
