The MAVI, Irpinia visual anthropological museum, is located in a nineteenth-century building in the center of Lacedonia (AV). Previously used as a district prison and district court, it was renovated after the 1980 earthquake with several large and well-distributed rooms on three floors. This is a project conceived after the publication of Frank Cancian's book, Lacedonia, an Italian village, 1957. A book that encouraged knowledge of a very important historical period for our territory and which read more
The MAVI, Irpinia visual anthropological museum, is located in a nineteenth-century building in the center of Lacedonia (AV). Previously used as a district prison and district court, it was renovated after the 1980 earthquake with several large and well-distributed rooms on three floors. This is a project conceived after the publication of Frank Cancian's book, Lacedonia, an Italian village, 1957. A book that encouraged knowledge of a very important historical period for our territory and which now finds an answer in the creation of the museum. The founding element of the museum is made up of 1801 photos, which Prof. Emeritus Frank Cancian, of the University of California, has generously made available to visitors. The photos, taken between January and July 1957 by the then still young student of cultural anthropology, are invaluable, because they convey to us with lively immediacy and with a strong visual and emotional impact the spirit of that time and that peasant world that had now disappeared following emigration, due to the great economic and social transformations of the post-war period. The photos are exhibited both on paper in various formats and in high-definition digital form. They are also accompanied by captions and grouped by theme in order to be more accessible to visitors. They portray people in their daily lives: at work, at school, at home, on farms, in processions, at religious festivals, in the square, at the bar, along the streets, during ceremonies. In these photos the faces of those people emerge with an evidence and incisiveness that are not always present in written documents. And they tell us about their beliefs, their feelings, their values, their ideas. The Museum therefore aims to promote research into documents and materials that until now have been considered of little value for the understanding of history: first of all photographs, but also paintings, sculptures, without forgetting poems, songs, proverbs... All a heritage that the Museum intends to safeguard and enhance, and that over the years will add to the Cancian collection. - The director of Mavi, Dr. Antonia Pio read less
