How Innovation Impacts on Diffused Museum. A case study on MuDEV.

Abstract

Since antiquity, museum is considered an institution which communicates and conserves heritage of humanity for educational aims. However, during the centuries, museums evolved renovating their places, dogmas and ethics. G. H. Rivière and H. de Varine were the first scholars who started connecting the definition of museum with innovative thoughts, inventing a sustainable institution called diffused museum. The key concepts that characterize a diffused museum are 1) placing the museum into an environment rich of traditions and culture which 2) sustains a public heritage thanks to the collaboration of 3) an active community that interacts with the organization. This thesis focuses on the case study of the MuDEV, a diffused museum in the territory of Empolese Valdelsa, established in 2017 through the union of twenty-one innovative museums. Thanks to its network of internal and external relations, the MuDEV is a perfect example of Italian diffused museum. The aim of this work is to detect interactions between visitors and museums, museums themselves, and quantitatively analyze the impact of the ticket system called the Art Pilgrim Passport. Our results show that innovation has a central role in MuDEV, where we observe positive interactions inside the network, with a stark increase of visitors after the application of the new ticket system. Moreover, the latter seems even enforce the connection between the museums themselves and the local community who constitutes the higher percentage of active users.