The Mind Museum

The Mind Museum is located in an ex-mental illness facility in Rome, Italy. It is a very interactive, hands on museum designed to teach people about mental illnesses. The curator of the museum Dr. Pompeo Martelli, who was previously a psychologist, created this hands on type of museum to really show that mental illnesses are actually diseases without getting into any of the politics. The digitally oriented museum is mainly focused on educating students in middle to high school. Dr. Martelli strongly believes that to truly teach today’s generation about mental illnesses (or anything for that matter) the old pamphlets and books will not cut it, today’s generation is on a different “wavelength” which prescribes different teaching methods. It uses many of the senses to show the little niches of being crazy. In one room the viewer is put in a chair and they watch pictures of former patients and they listen to recordings of the patients recall their lives stories. In a different room the viewer is put in a room and told to cover their ears and listen for the voices and the songs. This all in attempt to get the museum guests to feel what the patients felt and lived with. Although the museum is very technologically based, it does have a few pieces of “Traditional art”, including one installation, which is essentially the saying “Up close no one is normal.” The logo of the museum is an upside down funnel. This image was chosen from a 15th century painting in which a man is wearing an upside down funnel while he is using a scalpel to remove something from a patient. This painting is the first piece of art to show any signs of madness. I personally would love to visit it, if I spoke Italian.