A Museum set up in the Bastion of Santa Maria, the very first Cathedral of Milazzo set within the ancient walls of the Castle of the city, which from the top of a promontory lapped by the deep blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea watches over one of the few places in the Mediterranean continuously inhabited by man since ancient times.
Il it is a young reality but perfectly inserted in the socio-cultural fabric of the territory. A fascinating and evocative place, surmounted by the high stone vaults of the sixteenth-century structure and dominated by Siso, a young 10-meter sperm whale that in the summer of 2017 got entangled with its tail fin in an illegal fishing net off the coast of the Aeolian Islands .
Carmelo Isgrò, biologist and Director of the MuMa, was among the first to take care of Siso when, despite the efforts of the Coast Guard, there was nothing more for him to do. We met him in Milazzo to let us tell him about his passion for Mare Nostrum and the great adventure which culminated with the opening of the Museum.
Carmelo, how was the MuMa born?
The MuMa was officially born on 9 August this year, exactly two years after the arrival on the beach of Milazzo of the sperm whale Siso, a young male of about 10 meters who got entangled in an illegal fishing net off the Aeolian Islands. On August 9, 2017, the Coast Guard also tried to free him, but without success: Siso didn't make it and arrived, beached, along the coast of Capo Milazzo. At that point, while the operators were trying to figure out how to dispose of the body, I resorted to all my will to do and, together with the Fauna Museum of the University of Messina, I decided to recover the skeleton of the sperm whale. Those bones were the "seed" around which we decided to build the entire museum, and in fact even today they are the very first thing anyone who enters the MuMa notices. Important help also came from a campaign by through crowdfunding launched by the Siso Project website, with which we raised the first €33.000 needed to set up the first room of the Museum.
Where is Siso today?
Siso's skeleton underwent a long process of cleaning and treatment and to date it has been entirely reassembled and is on public display in the suggestive Bastion of Santa Maria del Castello di Milazzo, headquarters of the MuMa. It is supported in mid-air by some cables and has two details that immediately strike visitors and make them think: the illegal net that killed him, relocated to its tail fin, and the plastic waste found inside its belly.
What prompted you to set up such an ambitious project as the opening of a museum?
I had a great desire to create a scientific museum that was a little different from the traditional ones: at the MuMa the watchword is "interdisciplinarity" and the visitor is driven by the mixture of art and science to cultivate the desire to find new formulas for decline the man-environment relationship. The fundamental starting point was to convey the beauty of our sea: I am convinced that something can only be protected if you love it deeply. This is why I wanted to make visitors fall in love with this sea, to arrive all together to protect it and to protect all the "Siso" who inhabit it.
Would you take us on a “virtual” journey through your museum?
It is a Museum, as I said, a little different from the usual: here science meets art and people get to know each other through interactive educational videos, virtual reality, augmented reality and multimedia art installations with the aim of guiding the public to discovery of the impact that man can have on the ecosystem and of the necessary change in the relationship between him and the sea. After passing the skeleton of Siso, suspended where the altar of the first Cathedral of Milazzo once stood, we enter a path of inner growth organized in three rooms. The first, the hell, shows the effects of human activities that cause damage to the environment: here the walls are covered with the same illegal net that killed Siso in 2017 and on the ground are deposited, among other things, 10.000 cotton swabs and 15.000 plastic caps which, in about two hours, the boys of a local school collected in just one hundred meters of beach in the Bay of Sant'Antonio, near Milazzo. The second, purgatory, helps the visitor to become aware of the possible negative impact of human activity on the environment, and does so with infographics and material collected in a film library and a library for adults and children. Finally, the last room heaven, is dominated by an installation by the Milanese artist Giuseppe La Spada: a screen which, when approached, transforms our bodies into drops of water. In the sea, two drops that come together create a single larger drop: this is the message I like to convey especially to younger visitors, to encourage them to unite and protect our Home together.
What do you have planned for the future?
We have lots of initiatives planned! Many of these arise day after day also from so-called "collateral" activities, such as the International Conference on Gas Geochemistry that INGV organized here in the Castle of Milazzo from 30 September to 5 October last. On that occasion, for example, the friendship that binds me to the Director of the Palermo Section of the Institute, Francesco Italiano, was an important hook for organizing a conference in which to discuss activities related to the protection of the sea and the knowledge of cetaceans. In general, however, what I hope is that the MuMa will continue to grow and become an increasingly important point of reference for the area, capable of uniting the language of art with the evidence of science to push those who come even from far away to embark on an inner journey and rediscover the fundamental and delicate balance between man and sea.