MARGHERITA SANI is adjunct professor at the University of Bologna, coordinator of the Working Group LEM – The Learning Museum – at NEMO (Network of European Museum Organisations), board member of ICOM Italy and of Europeana Education. Between 1985 and 2021 she worked for the Institute of Cultural Heritage of the Region Emilia Romagna, Italy, dealing with museums and European funded projects.
She is an active member of numerous professional museum associations and networks, including NEMO, ICOM, European Museum Academy. She has been a member of the board of NEMO – Network of European Museum Organisations (2010-2019), a member of the jury of the Children in Museums award (2014-2021). Since 2019 she has been on the board of Europeana Education and since December 2022 on the board of ICOM Italy.
Margherita Sani’s reflections on the META-MUSEUM:
The cultural heritage sector is undergoing a major paradigm shift, moving from a cultural assets approach to a values-based and people centred one, with attention refocused from experts towards lay people. Cultural heritage resources, both tangible and intangible, are seen as living and dynamic entities that derive their meaning from the individuals who interact with them by using, re-interpreting and re-creating them.
In this context, the META-MUSEUM project brings a very important contribution to the ongoing transformative shift in the cultural heritage sector in terms of knowledge creation and experimentation around visitor engagement.
Taking place in museums and hospitals, at the crossroads between neurosciences and museography/museology, META-MUSEUM acknowledges the role that empathy and emotions play in how we understand and interact with cultural heritage and aims to provide professionals in the field with evidence-based principles for designing cultural experiences that are inclusive, participatory and can ultimately contribute to improving the quality of life of those involved.
Its results – from methodologies and technological tools for measuring visitors’ emotional and physiological responses, to capacity building and training modules – will be of value in advancing museum research and practice and of great interest for the professional development of all those operating in the cultural heritage field.
