SOURCES: BUSINESS CULTURE

In common perception, the word ‘Italy’ often rhymes with culture. The greatness of our country is preserved in museums of worldwide famous museums, but deserves to be discovered also inside smaller, yet important realities contributing to the development of society: business museums.

The network of the institutions preserving, communicating and enhancing the histories behind Italian companies has been coordinated since 2001 by Museimpresa, the Italian Association of Business Museums and Archives founded in Milan by Assolombarda and Confindustria. Through the years Museimpresa has involved more than one hundred institutions from the whole country, shaping an orchestra that gives voice to the many Italian excellences. Discovering them means bringing their charming peculiarities to light: from food and wine to design, from machinery to manufacturing, from jewellery to fashion and house living. The success of a branch is an expression of know-how, but also of details such as memory, entrepreneurship, relationship with territory and people. A business museum can keep all these features together: by telling them, it includes visitors in a wider narration, able to go beyond structures and exhibition limits.

For Antonio Calabrò, President of Museimpresa, to have such tools:

means to tell, especially to the new generations, the awareness that business is able to create, even nowadays, job and wealth, also contributing to the social, economic and civil growth of Italy. The key of innovation does not lie in the ‘business and culture’ pair, rather in the ‘business is culture’ anthem.

As an associate member since 2014, Fondazione FILA Museum is totally committed to such philosophy. First of all, by preserving the roots, as demonstrated by the continuous references to its Biella origins in a transnational museum display. Secondly, by spanning the same roots towards the others. Right, because the city of Biella presents more than a museum associated to the network: with their own peculiarities Archivio Storico Gruppo Sella, Casa Zegna and MeBo – Menabrea Botalla Museum shape an extremely rich landscape.

Collaboration is the word: that’s why, on the occasion of the ongoing XX Business Culture Week, we ‘party’ with 4×5 = 20: Grand Tour Biella, online event celebrating Museimpresa through the sending of very special postcards. From November 1st to 20th, our archival materials present an unprecedented correspondence, spreading words and pictures in order to celebrate territorial richness. Discover them on Instagram and Facebook with the hashtag #GrandTourBiella2021, and come to visit us physically as soon as you can: business is culture, and culture is beauty.