The Department for Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity has recently inaugurated the new lighting project at the Museum of the Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo, designed by iGuzzini, a project with an important cultural value in the place where the famous bronze statue is located: dating from between the IV and II century B.C. and attributed to the Praxiteles school, the statue found at the end of the ’90s in the Sicilian Channel is a unique artwork which continues the glorious legacy of Greek art in Italy.
The new intelligent lighting system, designed to guarantee the highest degree of flexibility, is able to create customised lighting effects on the surface of the Dancing Satyr statue, meant to enhance visitors’ experience of the beautiful classical masterpiece, including those who are visually impaired.
The lighting project is meant to increase the energy efficiency in the museum spaces while guaranteeing minimum visual impact in terms of light sources. It also improves the system management thanks to LED solutions that use DALI protocol (Underscore 15/18, View, Palco and Linealuce Compact RGBW) managed through a control system.
Being able to extend the experience to visually impaired visitors resulted from a close collaboration with Pietro Catalano, President of Trapani division of the Italian Union of the Blind and Partially Sighted (UICI), who, thanks to the solutions put in place by iGuzzini, helped develop different ways of interpreting the statue.
At the inauguration, the classical sculpture was illuminated with different lighting scenarios defined by excellent performers who developed luminous scenes as a result of their personal vision of the work. Among them was the Regional Councillor for Cultural Heritage of the Sicily Region, Sebastiano Tusa: from this moment on, the different lighting scenarios can be easily recalled by visitors through a digital device placed in the hall of the former Church of Sant’Egidio.
The lighting project at the Museum of the Dancing Satyr, is a step forward in the project “Conoscere la Forma/Knowing the shape”, launched in 2006 by the Research Study Centre of iGuzzini, in collaboration with the High Institute for Conservation and Restoration and the Omero Tactile Museum of Ancona, with the aim of making the artwork accessible to the visually impaired and the blind; in addition, the new lighting project of the Museum of the Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo enters the remarkable list of Light Is Back projects, an initiative undertaken by iGuzzini a long time ago to promote various cultural heritage sites worldwide in order to allow people to enjoy the masterpieces in their full splendour.
