TAM – Tower Art Museum

Fondazione Italia Patria della Bellezza chose the project Tam – Tower Art Museum, one of the three winning projects in the 2023 call for proposals. Initially planned for 2018, TAM, a private contemporary art museum, was opened in Matera on 1 December 2022. The project Volevo solo aprire un museo (I just wanted to open a museum) ironically recounts on YouTube and Instagram the years of waiting and bureaucratic problems encountered by the founders to open a youth social enterprise in the South. Today, the tower in the heart of Matera’s Sassi, once abandoned, houses a permanent collection and two annual exhibitions featuring local, national and international artists.

In 1993 Matera was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The founding partners of Torretta srl, who were born and raised in the Lucanian city, have experienced first-hand the risk of museification that Matera runs. ‘The museum that now exists’ wants to overturn the cliché that sees the city’s history often simplified: from ‘national shame’ to World Heritage Site. Today more than ever it is necessary to tell the story of a place that is alive and productive. The social enterprise wanted to open a museum so that the city would not become a museum.

The award-winning project develops its cultural strategy by curating uniquely site-specific projects. In addition, Tower Art Museum also becomes a space for the production of external events such as festivals, exhibitions and workshops, and offers services for cultural design.