Il Regional Museum of Psychiatry was established in Milan in 1993, thanks to the will of Teresa Melorio and Enza Baccei, to undertake a fascinating project: rediscovering the human value of those who suffer from even very serious mental disorders, integrating them into social and cultural life, overcoming the barriers that still segregate them in a world of their own, completely detached from a society too busy maintaining the narrow canons 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 Department of Mental Health of the Niguarda Ca’ Granda Hospital, the artistic direction of Marco Meneguzzo, and the support of some well-known Milanese art galleries.
The aim of the project was to transform the psychiatric hospital into a meeting place where “making art” was an opportunity to exchange ideas and languages between professional artists and people suffering from mental distress, and where the sharing of cultural and artistic experiences between the so-called “healthy” and “ill” concretely contributed to the care and transformation of a place that had been for years 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 proves that a real transformation in the way of caring is also achieved through a specific aesthetic quality of the space that expresses the richness of the symbolic values of the human being in all its depth. Via Ippocrate, 45 20161 Milano.
