Talk of poo has suddenly moved from the gutter to cool design circles thanks to the debut this week of il Museo della Merda - or the Museum of Shit - in Castelbosco, Italy. The world's first cultural institution dedicated to doo-doo is the brainchild of Gianantonio Locatelli, an enterprising farmer who smelled more than just a stink wafting off the piles of organic waste produced by the 2,500 cows grazing on his dairy farm.
After 12 years of transforming 1,000 tons of dung annually into biofuel (which he has sold to the Italian government as an alternative energy supply), as well as into material used for bricks and plaster, Locatelli has converted the farm's 14th-century castle into a public museum dedicated to the undervalued and misunderstood material.
'It's a fantastic subject,' gushes Milan-based architect Luca Cipelletti who restored the ground floor of the medieval structure into nine thematic rooms featuring installations from various artists including Carlo Valsecchi, Daniel Spoerri and Claudio Costa. 'Shit has always been privileged in ancient cultures - the Egyptians and Etruscans used it in their architecture. Today, it's the new gold because you can use it to make energy.'
The museum's rooms take visitors through a tour of excrement's privileged past and its potential future, along with scientific research and information on excrement in culture, technology and history. Meanwhile, the grounds of Locatelli's faeces factory look more like fashion headquarters than a sewer, thanks to several artistic interventions by David Tremlett and Anne and Patrick Poirier.
Tremlett painted the outside of 20 'digestors' - skyscraper-sized vats of poo that transform the material into usable energy, while the Poiriers designed green hilled art-scapes. 'Tremlett's paintings make the tubs look incredibly beautiful, while the landscapes set it all off in an unexpected way,' remarks Cipelletti. 'We're talking about shit here, but it's not vulgar at all. It's actually quite inspiring.'
The museum - the world's first dedicated to doo-doo - is the brainchild of Gianantonio Locatelli, an enterprising farmer
Locatelli has spent 12 years converting dung from his dairy farm into bricks, plaster and biofuel. He has now converted his farm's 14th-century castle into a public space, using the dung to make his own building materials
Milan-based architect Luca Cipelletti was charged with restoring the ground floor of the medieval structure into nine thematic rooms, each with artistic installations
'Shit has always been privileged in ancient cultures,' he says. Pictured here is a sacred scarab beetle from Egypt and a collection of iconographic items relating to Khepri, the ancient Egyptian god of rebirth, sunrise and the scarab, who had a beetle as a face. Courtesy of the University of Milan
The grounds of Locatelli's faeces factory look more like fashion headquarters than a sewer, thanks to artistic interventions
Anne and Patrick Poirier's leaf-shaped carpet, which has grass seeds sown into it that will eventually grow
'Methane Biolight?' - an installation created by il Museo della Merda in collaboration with Studio Passetti Lighting, 2015
The rooms take visitors through a tour of excrement's priveleged past and potential future, including its medicinal properties
'We're talking about shit here, but it's not vulgar at all. It's actually quite inspiring,' says Cipelletti
Every effort has bene made to ensure the conceptual, metaphorical and visual message of the museum runs throughout - right down to the display cases and plinths
ADDRESS
Il Museo della Merda
Frazione Campremoldo Sopra
Loc. Castelbosco
29010 Gragnano Trebbiense
Piacenza, Italy
-
‘I wanted to create a sanctuary’ – discover a nature-conscious take on Balinese architectureUmah Tsuki by Colvin Haven is an idyllic Balinese family home rooted in the island's crafts culture
-
‘Concrete Dreams’: rethinking Newcastle’s brutalist pastA new project and exhibition at the Farrell Centre in Newcastle revisits the radical urban ideas that changed Tyneside in the 1960s and 1970s
-
Mexican designers show their metal at Gallery Collectional, Dubai‘Unearthing’ at Dubai’s Gallery Collectional sees Ewe Studio designers Manu Bañó and Héctor Esrawe celebrate Mexican craftsmanship with contemporary forms
-
Royal College of Physicians Museum presents its archives in a glowing new lightLondon photography exhibition ‘Unfamiliar’, at the Royal College of Physicians Museum (23 January – 28 July 2023), presents clinical tools as you’ve never seen them before
-
Museum of Sex to open Miami outpost in spring 2023The Museum of Sex will expand with a new Miami outpost in spring 2023, housed in a former warehouse reimagined by Snøhetta and inaugurated with an exhibition by Hajime Sorayama
-
Jenny Holzer curates Louise Bourgeois: ‘She was infinite’The inimitable work of Louise Bourgeois is seen through the eyes of Jenny Holzer in this potent meeting of minds at Kunstmuseum Basel
-
‘A Show About Nothing’: group exhibition in Hangzhou celebrates emptinessThe inaugural exhibition at new Hangzhou cultural centre By Art Matters explores ‘nothingness’ through 30 local and international artists, including Maurizio Cattelan, Ghislaine Leung, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Liu Guoqiang and Yoko Ono
-
Three days in Doha: art, sport, desert, heatIn our three-day Doha diary, we record the fruits of Qatar’s cultural transformation, which involved Jeff Koons, a glass palace of books, and a desert sunset on Richard Serra
-
Hong Kong’s M+ Museum to open with six thematic showsAsia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture will open on 12 November in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, with six themed shows spanning art, design and architecture
-
Maurizio Cattelan invites the who’s who of culture to read bedtime storiesThe subversive Italian artist has recruited the likes of Iggy Pop, Takashi Murakami and Joan Jonas to read bedtime stories in a new digital project for the New Museum
-
James Turrell lights the way at Museo JumexThe California-born artist shows his true colours at the David Chipperfield-designed museum in Mexico City
