Ettore Guatelli. The immortality of things

The Guatelli Museum tells a story through carefully arranged objects that line walls and ceilings. The exhibition is the fruit of around 60 years of collecting and constant updating by a primary school teacher from the Province of Parma: Ettore Guatelli. In around the 1950s, Guatelli began exploring the warehouses of collectors in the Appennines. At first, he went just to browse, but then to sell and later to salvage furniture, objects and tools from farmhouses and artisans’ workshops – items that, in those years, were being lost to modernisation. The objects he recovered and displayed were not rare or precious pieces as can be found in many traditional museums, but everyday items which, to this day, still bear the traces of the people who used them daily, refashioned them and wore them out until they became extensions of themselves. The Guatelli Museum therefore showcases robust objects and spontaneous re-design. This story, brought to life by the voices of some of those closest to him who now give tours of the museum, is not one of nostalgia; rather, and particularly in view of the museum’s green vocation, it tells of the desire to bring memory and creativity to the modern world.