Milan has a new museum. It's called Maua and it's dedicated to augmented urban art. Open and accessible to everyone, free of charge, it brings forth from street art other artistic forms such as digital animation and photography.
The Maua, Museo di arte urbana aumentata, has been "open" for just a few days in Milan: easily accessible to everyone, it unites and interconnects different artistic forms such as street art, digital animations and photography. A project that takes you to discover five different peripheral areas of the city through the art that colours its walls. A technological open-air museum for those who love to be surprised by everyday things taking on a new form.
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Describing it as a museum of augmented urban art makes it difficult to understand straight away what we are talking about. It is a new project, at least for Milan, and it is worth explaining how it can be experienced. Around the city, in some areas more than others, walls are often used by so-called "writers" (that is, those who do graffiti) and street artists to paint and create their works. This happens both legally, on walls specifically made available by the municipality, and illegally, when artists feel "authorised" by virtue of their own passion. One way or another, walking through many of Milan's peripheral neighbourhoods you often find yourself face to face with true works of art — street art.
These works have been sought out, catalogued and photographed: there are 50 of them, and they form the stops that make up five urban itineraries designed across as many areas of Milan. Niguarda and Bovisa, Gallaratese, Giambellino, via Padova, Corvetto and Chiaravalle: little-known places — at least if you don't live there — that can in this way be made visible to everyone. Because as well as enjoying the work itself, thanks to Maua the murals are now treasure chests of other expressive forms.
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By downloading the Bepart app (free for both iPhone and Android) and pointing your phone at the mural, an augmented reality artwork will come to life and surprise you. You can do this even just by pointing it at the Maua catalogue, so without being in front of the actual work — though the clear recommendation is to make the most of this open-air museum to wander around the city and discover its hidden treasures.
All the information about the project and the works included in the museum's physical and virtual itinerary is available at this website: here you can, for example, find the map of Milan showing the location of all the works, or book a guided tour like the one we took to discover the project — highly recommended. Until 22 December, moreover, at Base, a partner of the project, it is possible to visit the exhibition featuring photographs of the selected works, which can be animated in augmented reality via Bepart. A catalogue published by Terre di Mezzo is also on sale, and the printed map of the museum is available.
What makes this project unique is the ability of those involved to unite various art forms starting from something that already existed: street art in Milan's outskirts is a resource, a heritage that in this way is valued and put to its best use. The skill lay in glimpsing its potential and allowing further imagination and art to grow from it. Looking at something we perhaps walk past every day with fresh eyes, and doing so with enthusiasm, is a great achievement. Maua has made this possible, and it is an excellent example of how youthful enterprise combined with organisational ability can give rise to initiatives capable of giving a new face to outskirts that are often cut off from the cultural and artistic events of an ever-buzzing city.
For instance, strolling through Giambellino in search of works on the walls showed us a new side of this neighbourhood and conveyed to us — curious as we were about augmented art — something about the history of the district that is sometimes precisely what led the artists to create something there and nowhere else. Maua was in fact born within the framework of Milano città aumentata, a project that won the Bando alle periferie, through which the Municipality of Milan promoted the regeneration of five neighbourhoods (Giambellino-Lorenteggio, Adriano-Padova-Rizzoli, Corvetto-Chiaravalle-Porto di Mare, Niguarda-Bovisa and Qt8-Gallaratese); the residents themselves actively contributed to the museum's creation by supporting the mapping of street art across the city.