ABSTRACT
In 1953, the Italian National Museum of Science and Technology of Milan opened under the auspices of Guido Ucelli, an influential engineer. The Museum was the result of a complex planning phase that lasted more than 20 years. The pivotal phase of planning was during the 1930s, a period marked by “Fascism modernism.” This chapter will show two main features of the life of the museum. First, museums played an important role in urban planning, shaping the development of entire neighborhoods. They had to address the needs of a specific local communities through their exhibits and collections. The planning of the Museum formed thus part of an intense debate concerning the urban landscape of Milan. Second, in his search for best models and inspirations, Ucelli contacted (and visited) a large number of technological museums, including several Eastern European ones (e.g. Moscow, Belgrade, Budapest, Prague, Warsaw), even after the Iron Curtain had cut Europe apart. This chapter will thus ask how ideas about science and technology museums circulated and were “translated” with the help of various communities of experts, and how the radically different political contexts before and after World War II affected this exchange of practices, models and objects.
